Interview with Zubeida Jaffer

Zubeida Jaffer was an 18-year-old student at UCT when she first entered a newsroom looking for a holiday job at the Cape Times. Instead of running errands as she expected, she ended up writing news reports. This experience led to her enrolling as a journalism student at Rhodes, where, uniquely, she was allowed to complete the three-year degree in two years. After graduating, Zubeida returned to the Cape Times. She also worked for the Rand Daily Mail and was a volunteer journalist at the community newspaper Grassroots. While reporting on police violence and killings in the Cape Flats she was arrested and detained without trial. In 1981 her passport was withdrawn and would only be returned a decade later. After leaving the Cape Times Zubeida became a media activist, working for community organisations and trade unions. She was a key organiser in the formation of the United Democratic Front. In 1986 she was detained again and tortured but eventually released without charge. After her release she headed up the media department at the University of the Western Cape for two years, served as the Southern Africa correspondent for Africa Information Afrique for five years, and in 1994 was elected to serve on the Independent Media Commission. In 1995 she obtained an MA degree in journalism from Columbia University in the US. On her return to South Africa she worked as political editor for the Daily News and then became the founding editor of Independent Newspaper’s parliamentary bureau. She was until recently Writer-in-Residence at the University of the Free State attached to the Department of Communication Sciences. She continues to hold the position of Research Fellow at UFS. Zubeida Is the first woman in Africa to have won the coveted foreign journalist award from the National Association of Black Journalists in the US. In 2020 she received the Allan Kirkland Soga Lifetime Achievement Award, which “recognises a sustained and extraordinary contribution to newspaper journalism on the part of an individual”. Zubeida is the author of two bibliographies, on Charlotte Mannya Maxeke and Ayesha Dawood, and a memoir.

In December 2022, Zubeida was honoured with a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil), honoris cause degree from the University of Stellenbosch.