ABOUT ME
Johannesburg, 2000. My first newsroom - fluorescent lights, the smell of burnt coffee, and the clickety-clack of keyboards filling the air. I had just signed up for the kind of education you don’t get in a lecture hall - one where ink stains your fingers and crime scenes replace classrooms. They threw me into the deep end - crime and court reporting, economics, human interest stories. There was no safety net, only the rush of deadlines and the relentless hunger for a good story. My first major assignment? Chasing ghosts in the aftermath of a flood that had swallowed parts of southern Africa. Finding the voices of those left behind, their homes turned to wreckage, their lives rewritten overnight. That’s where I learned - journalism isn’t just about facts. It’s about people. Since then, I’ve written for The Times, The Telegraph, Agence France-Presse, and The Associated Press, switching between ink and video, text and moving images. Each story left a mark- some more than others. I witnessed the collective mourning when Nelson Mandela passed in 2013, standing among the crowds who sang and wept. I was outside Balmoral in 2022 when Queen Elizabeth II's long reign came to an end, the Scottish air heavy with history. I covered the chaos of the 2023 militant attacks on Israel, seeing firsthand how an already fragile region was pushed further into turmoil. And I sat through the Oscar Pistorius trial, watching as a once-revered athlete faced the weight of justice. Journalism has taken me across continents, into the heart of history as it was being written. It’s not just a career. It’s a compulsion. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
