PAGE 38 — SUND AY SUNDA
Vanguard, OCTOBER 20, 2013
CNN/MULTICHOICE JOURN
A night of glitz for
Stories by JIDE AJANI, who was in Cape Town
D
IFFICULT TASK: It was bound to be – selection of the best journalist, that is. But it was a task that needed to be accomplished. Of the over 1,400 entries for this year’s CNN/MULTICHOICE AFRICA JOURNALIST AWARD, 27 finalists emerged. And of the finalists, only 16 winners emerged in the categories up for grabs. As Isha Sesay and Macfarlane Moleli, the hosts for penultimate Saturday’s event noted, the finalists “should consider themselves winners” in their own right. This is because on the second-largest and second most-populous continent of about 1.033 billion population, being selected as a finalist in this ever difficult business is no ordinary feat. When a winner is announced for a particular category, the eruption of applause in the main hall of the Cape Town International Convention Centre, CTICC, venue of the awards, was almost always neardeafening. There were three nominees from Nigeria. Of the three Nigerian nominees, two won awards in their respective categories. The two winners are Oluwatoyosi Ogunseye of Sunday Punch in the UNICEF-sponsored Environment Category, and Tolu Ogunlesi, a freelance journalist for Ventures Africa, Nigeria, in the Coca-Cola Company, Economics and Biz Awards category. Ogunlesi’s story was an investigative report on the Eko Atlantic City. He dedicated the awards to the millions of down-troden people in Nigeria and around the world. Ogunseye’s story, The Rich Also Cry, focused on pollution in an estate where gaseous metal had created very serious medical challenges. The third nominee from Nigeria, Geoff Iyatse, who works for The Guardian, was defeated by Ogunlesi. The overall winners, South Africans, Msindisi Fengu and Yandisa Monakali, clinched the prize for their piece on students’ hostel which looked like prison cells in South Africa. This was the 18th in the series of the yearly event. Other freelance journalists who won awards were Noicola de Chaud, with a documentary in the Culture category and Florence Dallu in the Radio General News category. OTHER AWARD WINNERS One of the most outstanding awards is the Free Press Award always given for bravery and courage. This year’s award went to Woubshet Taye, an Ethiopian journalist, who is serving a jail term in that country. His wife received the award on his behalf. The other award winners were Gifty Andoh Appiah, Joy News TV, Ghana, for her story on public toilets, in the TV Bulletin category;
DOING NIGERIA PROUD: From left, Oluwatoyosi Ogunsheye, Geoff Iyatse and Tolu Ogunlesi - the two winners and nominee. Photographs by Jide Ajani
ROBBEN ISLAND PRISON
A peep into Mandela’s cell I
Nelson Mandela’s cell in Block B, always kept neat
t was a visit that evoked emotions of many kinds. It was also a visit to one of the most popular prison facilities in the world – Robben Island Prison. And one of the inmates who made the prison to attract global attention was prisoner 466/64, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. Mandela, referred to as Madiba or Tata (Father of the nation), who was later to become President of South Africa, spent 18 of his 27- year jail term in Robben Island prison. He never gave up. The bold inscription on the walls of the docking area, THE HUMAN SPIRIT CANNOT BE MENACLED, or another, THE TRIUMPH OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT, are testaments to the struggle and the never-say-die mentality of Mandela and his other freedom fighters during the anti-apartheid struggle. Even the very voluble and rambunctious President Jacob Zuma of South Africa, as well as the immediate past president of the same country, Thabo Mbeki’s father, served various jail terms on the island. For an island that was purely a colony for lepers, the conversion of the island into a prison facility came in 1961. It was a maximum security prison for political prisoners until 1991. The medium security prison for criminal prisoners was closed in 1996 A prison tour guide, Kolekile Mahlahla, who himself spent eight years as an inmate there, knows his trade very well. He knows the history of the prison from inception, though he was hauled in there sometime in the late 1970s. His own story was one of betrayal – a supposed friend he had met on one of his sorties in and out of South Africa for insurgency training, sold him out during interrogation. Narrating the story of what the inmates of the facility experienced, a story of immeasurable punishment both physically and mentally, Mahlahla was very graphic in explaining the suffering of the inmates. A few of the tourists, made up largely of journalists from different parts of Africa, could not but try to cover their water-laden eyes, a display of emotive response to the tales of woe as retold by Mahlahla.
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