We typed thousands of words, snapped hundreds of photographs, interviewed scores of people, wrote reams of copy and were moved to tears at the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture.
This past weekend a Flow Communications team covered the annual lecture, delivered by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, as well as a Gender in Dialogue event the following day, for the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
Under the leadership of Flow sub-editor Willem Steenkamp, CEO Tara Turkington, Cape Town manager Roy Barford, writer Andrea Weiss, all-around Flowstar and photographer Riefkah Adams, and I took on the annual challenge with gusto.
Willem had a well thought-through plan for how we would cover the Annual Lecture at the Cape Town City Hall on Saturday, 9 August, and the Gender in Dialogue at the University of Cape Town’s Jameson Hall the next day. As requested we arrived early on Saturday to set up, and we took the time to fine-tune our plan, which included finding the perfect spots from where to take notes, record the speech and take photographs.
Riefkah, surrounded by a team of old hacks, soon got into the flow and started snapping away, capturing Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, President Bachelet, Mandla Mandela and a host of other luminaries. The hours passed in a blur, as Bachelet ended her speech we readied ourselves to canvass the views of the audience, no mean feat considering people were still absorbing what Bachelet had said.
As the City Hall emptied and crews set to work dismantling stage and catering areas, we commandeered a space and carried on working, choosing images, writing stories and double-checking facts. Jellytots were eaten and water drunk, and the night grew darker. Tara, Roy and Willem’s brief expanded to rushing off to Vodacom’s head office in Cape Town, to upload two videos: one of Bachelet delivering her speech, and a moving tribute to Nelson Mandela that was played as an introduction to the event.
When Sunday morning rolled around Willem, Roy, Andrea and I made our way to UCT's Jameson Hall for the Gender in Dialogue event which, when we looked at the programme, we knew was going to be something special. We quickly set to work, our duty to report on the pre-programme and the Dialogue.
The intense pre-programme session, with people speaking about gender violence and inequality, brought many, including myself, to tears. The hall was filled by hundreds of people, including gender activists, UCT students and academics.
Former First Lady and social activist Graça Machel hosted the event in her capacity as chancellor of UCT. Sharing the platform with Bachelet were Mbuyiselo Botha of Sonke Gender Justice, Nomboniso Gasa, feminist activist, writer and researcher, and filmmaker and gender activist Zethu Matebeni.
We kept up, taking notes of what people were saying. Willem was roaming the hall with a camera, and ended up taking more than 600 shots.
The last speaker was filmmaker and gender activist Matebeni, who spoke poetically about the pain, the agony, the horror that many women, lesbians, transgendered people and homosexuals go through, and the devasation rapes and murders perpetrated on them have on families. Matebeni received a rousing standing ovation; I cried and clapped, and cried some more.
As proceedings drew to a close we found a table outside Jameson Hall, which became our mini-newsroom. But there was no opportunity to take in the beautiful views: our heads were down, the occasional mutter escaping our lips as we double-checked copy and made sure our work succinctly captured what had been an amazing dialogue.
Nelson Mandela Foundation CEO Sello Hatang made us beam when he spied us beavering away. He said whenever he saw the Flow team he knew that we were working, and here again, we were going for it.
