Digging dung… Reflections on amaBhungane

Photo: www.fifdirect.org.uk

Being an investigative journalist feels a bit like being a detective (not that I’ve ever been a detective, but I’m sure this is what it would feel like).
So for this post I’m being pretty lazy (yes, detectives are lazy too) and am adapting the exit report I wrote for amaBhungane after my three month long investigative journalism internship.
For those who are wondering, let me first tell you more about what amaBhungane is before I waffle on about my internship experience. amaBhungane AKA the M&G Centre for Investigative Journalism, is a “non-profit company founded to develop investigative journalism in the public interest”.
amaBhungane means “dung beetles” in isiZulu and they have possibly the best slogan in the world… “Digging dung, fertilizing democracy.”
To read more about amaB (as it is fondly known) and about why investigative journalism and the non-profit model is important, click here (see, I’m being lazy again).
The amaB offices are based at the Mail & Guardian offices in Johannesburg (although some of the amaB team members are also based in Cape Town and Durban), and the stories written are published in the newspaper, which comes out every Friday and is distributed across southern Africa.

Now, back to my experience…

The amaB internship was an incredible, and unfortunately went by way too quickly. When I got the phone call in October last year offering me the internship, I couldn’t believe it. I had applied for it knowing that I didn’t fully meet all the requirements that were set out in the advert (namely that I wasn’t working in mainstream media and had virtually no investigative journalism experience).
As such I arrived at amaB full of hope, excitement and ready to really make the most of the opportunity, but also not entirely confident. It was fairly daunting knowing I was coming to a very politically orientated publication – when I have had almost no experience in this field.
Despite knowing about my background, the amaB team treated me with confidence from the beginning and that in turn bolstered my own confidence.

Stories and what I learnt (The dodgy pastor)

I had a few stories published while working for amaB, and you can scroll down on my blog to read them.
The first story that I did was about a pastor who was appointed municipal manager at Camdeboo Municipality in the Eastern Cape, despite numerous charges of fraud and corruption hanging over his head. Although relatively speaking a small story, it was a very good initiation for me.
 One of the biggest things that I learnt from that story and which is something that I have to continue to work on, is how to process a large amount of information/documentation, but not get bogged down by the details and essentially learn how to take the main points out of them and put those across in a story.
Drew Forrest (amaB associate partner and intern supervisor) was really great at helping me with this and frequently brought me back down to earth when I got too wrapped up in small, complicated details.

amaB is awesome

Something that’s really awesome about amaB, is that even if you’re working alone on a story, you actually aren’t. The team meets three mornings a week (via skype) and discusses what everyone is working on. I found that very stimulating. Being able to share ideas, get advice, be asked questions, ask questions, have other people review the documents/evidence/information was fantastic. It not only helped me to further my stories, focus them, to know what to do, think about new aspects, but it was also obviously good for me to know that someone else was “checking up on me” to make sure I wasn’t screwing up. It was also useful to talk about the other journalists’ stories during the skype meetings, just in terms of broadening my horizons and hearing how they were approaching their stories etc.
Writing such long, complicated investigative pieces was also a massive learning curve. It was a challenge to work out what the lede (intro) is and how to write it in a catchy, “sexy” way (Drew is great with this), how to order the story, how to make things flow, and basically just how to put massive amounts of info down in the most sensible, “simple” and reader-friendly way possible.
I would sit with Drew while he edited my stories. He is a magician when it comes to writing things in the most concise manner, swopping paragraphs around to change the order and the flow and using certain words to make the jumps between topics more seamless. I learnt so much about writing and about editing just from these few intense editing sessions.
Apart from that I also learnt about more tricks and tools of the trade used by investigative journalists and better ways of protecting sources and keeping sensitive information secret.

Stories and what I learnt (Blvoor Mine)

I worked with one of the permanent investigative reporters, Sally Evans, and the other two interns, Tileni Mongudhi (from Namibia) and Justice Kavahematui (from Botswana) on a story about Blyvoor Mine in Carletonville.
It was good to work with one of the permanent investigative reporters, because it gave me an insight into how she does things, how she operates and approaches a story, what kind of things she asks her sources, etc.
We had to do this story fairly quickly and it was a massive pull-together team effort between the four of us. I landed up interviewing some of the main “protagonists” of the story, and had to keep my cool through various rants and personal abuses thrown at me.
Myself and the other two interns, as well as a photographer, also visited the Blyvooruitzicht town to speak to people on the ground and popped in at the mine, where I nearly got arrested. Never a dull moment!

Stories and what I learnt (Hydro power)

While working at amaB, I had the incredible opportunity to travel to the Northern Cape for a few days to do some more research on a story I was writing about the proposed hydroelectric schemes for the Orange River - the most contentious being the ones planned at Augrabies Falls and Orange Falls.
The trip to the Northern Cape is a story in itself, which I will endeavour to write up sometime soon. But what was really valuable for me, was that when I got back to work, Drew was on leave. As such, I had to deal with the newsroom myself in sorting out what photos needed to be used, dealing with the sub-editors and finalising the pages. It was very interesting for me to be part of the production process.

“Aha” moment

Graphic: krystle-rose.blogspot.com

To end off, I want to describe a feeling I had very early into the internship. It was probably about the second or third week when I had an “aha” moment - finally realising that this is why I am doing journalism. When I went to university my lecturers laughed at me for saying I was studying journalism in order to save the world. And at my previous publication I was mindlessly churning out fluffy pieces… This internship made me realise that I want to be a dung beetle, doing investigative journalism. I love digging. I love the challenge of it. I love the satisfaction one gets when you finally get information, or get hold of a source, or figure out a piece of the puzzle. I love going beyond just the everyday surface level stories. But most of all I love that feeling of uncovering wrong-doing and injustice, in the hope that by exposing it something will then be done about it and a contribution will be made towards democracy.