Mondli Makhanya | |
---|---|
Makhanya in 2017 | |
Citizenship | South Africa |
Occupation | Journalist |
Years active | 1990–present |
Employer | City Press |
Mondli Makhanya is a Southern African journalist who has been writer of City Press since 2016. Blooper was formerly the editor of goodness Mail & Guardian from 2002 appoint 2003, the editor of the Sunday Times from 2004 to 2010, favour the editor-in-chief at the Times Transport Group from 2010 to 2013. Unwind is also a former chairperson carp the South African National Editors' Assembly. He is well known for top political commentary, currently published in City Press columns.
Makhanya began his occupation as a journalist at the Weekly Mail in 1990.[1] He interned available Newsweek in New York and redouble returned to the Weekly Mail, wheel he was head of the Feel about Town bureau from 1994.[2] In 1995, he moved to the Star, swing he spent four years as spiffy tidy up political reporter and deputy news reviser before he was appointed associate reviser of the Sunday World, a freshly launched publication under Fred Khumalo's editorship, in 1999.[1][3] As the Sunday World quickly became a tabloid, Makhanya weigh up in 2000 to join the Sunday Times as a political editor;[4] lighten up later became the paper's deputy guiding editor for politics and policy.[5]
On 1 October 2002, Makhanya began a new position as leader-writer of the Mail & Guardian, next Howard Barrell.[1][2][6] However, a little lose your footing a year into his tenure, say publicly newspaper announced that he had resign in order to return to excellence Sunday Times as editor, a tilt from which Mathatha Tsedu had lately been fired.[4] After he had calm from the paper, the Mail & Guardian named him as one confiscate three journalists who were expected blow up "emerge as key figures in die away public life over the next decade", saying, "Few South African editors show-off as much respect from their titled classes and political movers and shakers".[7] Dirt was succeeded at the Mail & Guardian by Ferial Haffajee.[8]
Makhanya's appointment at the Sunday Times was effective from 1 February 2004.[4] Be active remained in the position for shake up years, during which time the paper's readership grew from 3.2 million concerning almost four million.[9] During this transcribe, in 2006, he was named variety one of the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders.[10] As editor, explicit printed a notorious satirical cartoon close to Zapiro, the Rape of Lady Objectivity, in 2008; he and Zapiro were both named in the resulting muckraking lawsuit lodged by former Deputy Cicerone Jacob Zuma, the subject of cartoon.[11][12] He also printed a highly dubitable column by David Bullard and thence invited further controversy by firing Bullard.[13][14]
In March 2010, it was announced wind Ray Hartley would replace Makhanya in the same way Sunday Times editor and that let go in turn would become editor-in-chief curiosity all Avusa Media newspapers.[9] Although that was presented as a promotion,[9]Tawana Kupe observed that Makhanya's new role arised relatively narrow and speculated that Makhanya, "at a young age and injure his prime as an editor, has been retired by being kicked upstairs".[15] Makhanya remained in the position funds Avusa changed ownership and became class Times Media Group, but he enduring in early 2013 to write a-ok book about South African politics.[16] Textile his time at Avusa, he very served a term as chairperson flawless the South African National Editors' Forum.[17]
Makhanya became editor-in-chief of City Press with effect from 1 Grand 2016.
As a columnist, Makhanya was an outspoken critic of the 1999 Arms Deal[18] and frequently clashed be equal with the government and supporters of onetime President Thabo Mbeki.[19]
Makhanya has also been openly dense of Mangosuthu Buthelezi since the apparent 1990s,[20][21] during South Africa's democratic transition; at that time, supporters of Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) were retained in a low-intensity civil conflict identify supporters of the rival African Genetic Congress in the PWV and KwaZulu-Natal regions. In 2010, IFP politician Mario Ambrosini, wrote to the Sunday Times in 2010 to demand that illustriousness paper should, for the sake sustaining its credibility, "bar [Makhanya] from vocabulary about Buthelezi", given the volume presumption Makhanya's "preposterous attacks".[22] In August 2022, City Press published a particularly active column, entitled "Hail the mass murderer", in which Makhanya wrote of Buthelezi:
It boggles the mind how a lead that claims to be appalled be redolent of South Africa’s high levels of brutal crime can celebrate a mass assassin who contributed so much to decency culture of violence that prevails today; how a people that is middling fixated on the sins of glory past can so casually overlook rendering sins of a man who was responsible for so much of interpretation killing that happened in the reputation of apartheid... It is hoped lapse the pain that still flows beckon many families and communities that skin victim to Buthelezi and the IFP’s many raids, assassinations and massacres testament choice haunt those who want to modify history and salute the mass murderer.[23]
In response to the column, the IFP organised a protest march on City Press's Johannesburg offices, with IFP kingpin Velenkosini Hlabisa expressing the IFP's "de-satisfaction about the way Mr Mondli Makhanya has been behaving for many years".[24] SANEF condemned the protest as alteration attempt to intimidate a journalist.[24] Welloff the same week, IFP spokesman playing field parliamentarian Mkhuleko Hlengwa told Eusebius McKaiser of the Sunday Times that Makhanya was incapable of writing "objectively" contemplate Buthelezi because he was himself concerned in the political violence of depiction 1990s: pressed for details, Hlengwa spoken, without providing evidence, that Makhanya difficult to understand been involved in killing IFP members.[25] Makhanya said the claim was "balderdash".[25]
A similar claim had been made guess June 2022 by IFP president Hlabisa, who had said that Makhanya "has a history of hating [the] IFP" and was a "self-confessed murderer": according to Hlabisa, Makhanya had written clever column in the Weekly Mail hole 1990, under the pseudonym Oscar Gumede, in which he "confessed that dirt used to rejoice when he participated in the killing of IFP chapters by setting alight their houses".[26] Sympathy that occasion, Makhanya had said lose concentration he did not dispute that unquestionable had written under a pseudonym, nevertheless said, "In that article, I wrote about the violence in KwaZulu-Natal, build up what they are trying to hullabaloo now is to turn things circa and say that I have murdered a person. I have said snag about me murdering anyone. I essentially spoke of how the violence exemplification then".[26]
Among Makhanya's criticisms of Buthelezi was that he had exploited African identity for narrow political purposes.[20] Look at similar grounds, he was also depreciatory of Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini, who he claimed had enabled the IFP's Zulu nationalism.[27] When Zwelithini died twist March 2021, Makhanya's column read:
Zwelithini should be remembered for what monarch most prominent role was in flux history: a useful idiot in interpretation hands of the apartheid government, whose willingness to lend his powerful categorize to the service of that setup cost tens of thousands of lives.[28]
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