LIMINAL

Sorry Day, May 26, opens up wounds for those taken away from their families by the state. Taken from his mother as a baby, Lee Willis-Ardler, learnt to direct his anger into positive change: Lee Willis-Ardler is a straight talker and prone to using colourful, fiery language. But when he is asked about ‘being stolen’ from his mother as a newborn, he is lost for words. “I go through periods thinking about it,” he eventually said after a long pause. “There’s an anger about it and it doesn’t go away.”

The Walkley Magazine October  2008 Moving from journalism into public relations in the welfare sector, has put me on the other side of stories and more aware of a minefield of ethical and privacy issues. I owe a debt to those advocates who moved mountains, and fast, to find people with personal stories who made my copy come to life. I can now appreciate the minefields those people have to navigate. Now I’m the one fielding calls from impatient reporters wanting a case study when a deadline is looming.

The Canberra Times, October 20, 2008 The decision to axe Radio National's Religion Report came as a shock. Twice I have worked on the program, first as its producer, and then as its presenter. It is put together by only two people, but it is able to draw on the wealth of experience and history in the ABC's religion department to create a gripping specialist current affairs program that subjects religion to the same sort of journalistic scrutiny as other programs subject other parts of life. And there's no doubt that religion is a terribly important (if little-reported) part of life, lying behind so much of the news we regard as “political” or “diplomatic” or “social”. Where else in prime-time radio or television have you been able to hear the people who matter quizzed about their interpretations of Judaism, Christianity or Islam and the way in which they plan to act on those interpretations? Some of these people will be happy about the decision to axe the program....

South Africa's deeply unpopular President, Thabo Mbeki, has fallen on his sword. Senior ministers are also likely to go, leaving a big political vacuum. The ruling party pushed Mbeki to resign. Why? The smell of corruption. Mbeki's future had hung in the balance after a senior judge inferred that Mbeki had interfered with the prosecution case against Jacob Zuma, the ANC party leader and Mbeki's chief rival for the top job. Read more from journalists in South Africa.

The Canberra Times, May 24, 2008 It shouldn't surprise us that South Africa's townships are embroiled in fresh violence. Apartheid was South Africa's Berlin Wall. It was the great divider. With its passing, poor black South Africans, accustomed to prejudice but more disaffected, have turned on those they think are robbing them of better lives. This past week dozens of foreigners, other Africans, have been killed by South Africa's poor. Tens of thousands more have fled into refugee shelters since the violence began earlier this month in the Johannesburg township of Alexandra. Locals with the support of trade unions and some sections of the media accuse outsiders of stealing jobs and fueling a spate of crime. The tensions have been there for years. But what is surprising is the intensity and rapidity of the violence. Opportunistic mobs have raped women and burnt former neighbours to death. The xenophobic violence has spread from poor areas of Johannesburg to Cape ...

I have to pinch myself. The skinny man with a funny name is making me dizzy with hope. A black fellah on the yellow brick road to the American Presidency! Throughout the world Obama's ambition is sending a ripple through neighbourhoods of 'colour' and neighbourhoods where racism still threatens to dwarf self determination and aspiration. My birthplace, South Africa, made sure I was conscious of my colour and everybody else's. People of mixed blood - "coloured" - as my mob were referred, were distinct for all the wrong reasons. Australia and its acceptance of me and my family has made me see that more clearly. Apartheid was like living at a foreign airport, having to go routinely through the ritual of customs. That ritual is characterised by the assumption of one's criminality, of one's shame or guilt. You approach the desk with all your papers intact but with a sense of being called to prove yourself. You learn to be polite, clear and efficient,...

Canberra Times, December 22, 2007 South Africa is facing its greatest upheaval since its historic leap towards democracy in 1994. The elevation this week of the populist, charismatic and allegedly corrupt politician Jacob Zuma to the leadership of the ruling party threatens to take South Africa on a much more turbulent course. Whoever leads the African National Congress is traditionally the party's presidential candidate. The party's overwhelming backing has ensured victories first for Nelson Mandela in '94, then Thabo Mbeki in 1999 and 2004. The main opposition party called the ANC convention vote on Tuesday “dismal” for the ANC and for the nation; an indictment on the ruling party that they could find no better candidate than Zuma to lead it. It's true. Zuma's win says more about the failings of South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki’s than Zuma's strengths.