Features

Global Communicator: Charlayne Hunter-Gault

Charlayne Hunter-Gault
Former CNN South Africa Bureau Chief
Johannesburg, South Africa

Acclaimed journalist Charlyane Hunter-Gault knows a lot about struggle. Her life began as a struggle – her mother was in labor with her for four days. While in high school, she began a two-year struggle against Georgia’s segregation laws to gain admission to the all white University of Georgia.

The battle continued after she was admitted –– she had to face down taunts, threats, and vandalism from her fellow classmates. She endured, and became one of the first two African-American students to graduate from the university. She has forged new paths for minority journalists during four decades of distinguished reporting for print and broadcast outlets. Now she is reporting on South Africa’s efforts to reinvent itself after years of apartheid. Moreover, she is braving scorching heat, difficult terrain, and civil war to tell the world the story of Africa’s struggle to develop and prosper.

What is the source of the strength and courage it has taken to build an extraordinary life out of impossible dreams? “It stems from the way I was brought up,” said Hunter-Gault. “My mother, my grandmother, the mothers in my neighborhood, my church, all gave me the wonderful values that formed an armor that I have worn through my life and career.”

Her values and her struggles have both shaped the work she has done since arriving in South Africa. As a correspondent for National Public Radio and later as the South Africa Bureau Chief for CNN –– a position she held until earlier this year –– Hunter-Gault has endeavored to provide context and perspective on the stories that come out of Africa. She says that she likes reporting for NPR –– which she still does regularly –– because she has time to tell a fuller story. Too often, she says, the news out of Africa is episodic and does little to promote understanding of the complex issues behind the stories. “It’s always a challenge to try to present people as they are and represent them fairly, ” she said. “Africans are so often portrayed as hapless victims or corrupt dictators. You need to look at the larger picture.”

Hunter-Gault has attempted to look at the larger picture in her new book, New News Out of Africa: Uncovering Africa’s Renaissance (Oxford University Press, June 2006). She says that she wanted to look at Africa through “a different prism.” In the book, she offers a distinctive assessment of modern Africa, revealing that there is more to the continent than the bad news of disease, disaster, and despair.

She looks first at South Africa, contrasting the country she first encountered as a young reporter — when she personally witnessed the brutality of apartheid — with the black-led, multiracial society of today. She describes the country as undergoing one of the most radical social and economic experiments in modern times. She details the excitement of watching greater numbers of South Africans rise from poverty into the working and middle classes, though she emphasizes that there is still a high poverty rate among black citizens (some 30 to 40 percent are unemployed). She also describes the way AIDS is ravaging the nation. But, she explains, the nation is committed to affirmative action and South African universities have opened their doors to black students. She also reveals that many of the tales about the violence of South African society are myths. Hunter-Gault also looks at the continent-wide efforts to promote “an African Renaissance,” focusing particularly on the political and economic conditions in Rwanda, Mozambique, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Angola, and Sierra Leone. Finally, the book portrays the challenges of reporting on the continent and the efforts of African journalists to tell their own story.

Hunter-Gault describes Africa’s state as “fragile,” and says it “remains to be seen” whether Africa will truly experience a renaissance. She says that one large factor will be the patience of the people. “Leaders were put in power –– some with great expectations, some corrupt –– and people wanted things to be better immediately,” she said. “But there was a complete rape of these countries, including records of progress. That has to be overcome and that takes time.”

She says that in South Africa the black led government is instituting policies to reverse decades of oppression. “South Africa has a long way to go, but in eleven years, the country has come a long way…The fact that it’s working demonstrates the sophistication of the South African people who realize that you can’t reverse years of deprivation in a few years,” says Hunter-Gault. “Even with so much poverty and lack of opportunity, this country is an historical laboratory and people have that perspective.”

Hunter-Gault says her perspective about her job and her life in Africa has its roots in the American South. “My experiences from my youth form a part of the prism through which I view this experience in South Africa,” she said. Born in Due West, South Carolina, Hunter-Gault spent much of her childhood in Covington, Georgia and Atlanta. Her early inspiration for a career in journalism included her grandmother, who read three newspapers a day; the comic strip character Brenda Starr, who was an intrepid reporter; and her mother, who encouraged Hunter-Gault to follow her dreams. “My mother knew instinctively that dreams propel ambition,” she said. It was the dream of studying journalism that led her to apply to the University of Georgia, which had not admitted an African-American student in its 176-year history. She and Alfred “Hamp” Holmes applied to the university, but it would take a protracted court battle for them to gain admission. In the meantime, Hunter-Gault started college at Wayne State University in Detroit. She and Hamp were finally admitted to the University of Georgia in January 1961, nearly two years after they had first applied. Hamp lived with a fami ly off campus, but Hunter-Gault stayed on campus in a dormitory. Students on the campus were so hostile and abusive that the university suspended the two students for their own “safety.” It took two trips to court to get them readmitted. They returned to campus accompanied by plain-clothes police. It took another court order to declare all university facilities desegregated so that Hunter-Gault could eat in the school cafeteria.

While she was a student, Hunter-Gault toppled another barrier when she secured an internship at the Louisville Times, becoming the first African-American to be employed by that newspaper. After graduating from the University of Georgia in 1963, Hunter-Gault went to work for the New Yorker magazine as an editorial assistant. She had advanced to the position of staff writer before she left the magazine to accept a Russell Sage Fellowship for a year. She then worked as an investigative reporter and evening anchor for WRCTV in Washington, D.C. Hunter-Gault returned to New York a year later to join the staff of the New York Times, where she established the newspaper’s Harlem bureau and specialized in coverage of the urban black community.

In 1978, Hunter-Gault left the New York Times after a decade to joint PBS’s MacNei l-Lehrer NewsHour (now the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer), where she was a national correspondent and anchor. She left the NewsHour in 1997 to join her husband, Ron Gault, a banker, who had been transferred to South Africa in 1996. At that time, she became the chief correspondent in Africa for National Public Radio (NPR). She left NPR in 1999 to join CNN, where she served as the network’s Johannesburg, South Africa, bureau chief. She served in that capacity until earlier this year.

A history maker and astute observer of history-in-the-making, Hunter-Gault has received numerous awards for outstanding journalism including two Emmy Awards and two Peabody Awards, having earned the latter for her work in Africa. She is the author of In My Place (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1992), a memoir of her early life and her role in the desegregation of the University of Georgia. In addition, she has received more than two-dozen honorary degrees. She was honored in 1986 as Journalist of the Year by the National Associat ion of Black Journalists.

Hunter-Gault said that she has been greatly inspired by a line from Zora Neale Hurston’s book Their Eyes Were Watching God: “She had been getting ready for her great journey to the horizons in search of people; it was important to all the world that she should find them and they find her.” Hunter-Gault said of her life and work in Africa “It’s my continuing journey to the horizon. Everyday I’m meeting new people, learning new things.” She added, “Everywhere I go I have an experience that uplifts me. If you love what you do, you continue to grow.”

Charlayne Hunter-Gault has done much in her extraordinary career, and she has earned many laurels on which she could rest. But this awardwinning journalist, author, lecturer, and civil rights pioneer remains enthusiastic about her role in bringing the story of the exciting changes in Africa to the world. So, now that she has left CNN and completed her latest book, what’s next on the horizon? “The horizon,” she replies.

You went to live in South Africa just a few years after the official end of apartheid. What is the most notable change over the past decade?

The most significant change has been in the movement of black people out of poverty into the lower middle, middle, upper middle and wealthy classes. Since I first came, there are towers, and apartment buildings springing up everywhere. An awful lot of people are still living in poverty, but that’s to be expected. The black-led government is instituting policies to reverse years –– decades –– of oppression. South Africa has a long way to go, but in eleven years, the country has come a long way.

How does your experience in fighting America’s “apartheid” when you integrated the University of Georgia affect your understanding and coverage of South Africa as it deals with the legacy of apartheid?

Apartheid in South Africa was government-approved oppression. My personal experience with oppression and denial has given me a different sensitivity to these issues. My experiences from my youth form a part of the prism through which I view this experience in South Africa.

What’s one big way that South Africa’s efforts to remedy apartheid’s effects compare or contrast to the United States during the civil rights era?

It’s particularly interesting for me to look at the remedies that a black-led government has put in place for a black majority and compare it to America in the fifties and sixties when the courts did the right things for people who were a minority in the country. The American Civil Rights Movement was a major success, but in the intervening years, remedies put in place have been challenged by representatives of the majority. In South Africa, affirmative action is not a dirty word – its government policy. The remedies are backed by a strong government commitment. Race is still an issue in America. While I applaud programs that address diversity, I believe we’ve got to address the unfinished business of race and its effects even as we move to the broader issues of diversity. I wasn’t barred from the University of Georgia because it was not diverse; I was kept out because I was black.

What is journalism and news coverage like within South Africa?

The South African media has a pretty good track record for only eleven years of freedom. Like the country itself, the media is in its adolescence and people are getting their legs. The coverage is more robust, and they are trying new things. The South African government, like all governments, is critical of the press, but now there are instruments in the courts to deal with any attempts of encroachment on the part of the government.

How would you describe or rate American coverage of South Africa?

Americans get their news about Africa in such small doses that there is no context. There are journalists who try to make a difference and report the big picture, but management is not interested. As a result, the coverage is episodic, and Americans don’t learn about what is happening in Africa in a coherent, logical way. But you can’t just blame the media. You have to put some responsibility on the public. If you don’t demand better news, you get the news you deserve.

What’s an important issue that we’re missing, or misunderstanding?

Americans need to look at the larger picture of what’s going on in Africa. For instance, there’s lots of coverage of bird flu, but not of the poverty that provides context for why people might be desperate enough to hide sick birds and send them to market. The West likes to point fingers at Africa for its lack of resources and infrastructure, but the fact is that the West has a lot to do with it. People need to understand that.

Why should we pay more –– or a different kind of — attention to what’s happening in South Africa and on the entire continent?

You can no longer look at foreign troubles in isolation. For instance, trouble in the Delta in Nigeria can affect the price of gas in the United States. Americans need to pay more attention to Africa out of a strategic self-interest. People who are poor and hungry can be easily exploited by extremists — even terrorists — not because of ideology or ignorance, but because of a desire to feed their families.

What role could — and should — African-Americans play in changing attitudes about Africa?

There needs to be a critical mass of people who lobby for Africa to influence policy. African-Americans are logical constituents, but they are conflicted about their connection to the continent. This is partly a function of deficits in education. They don’t get a lot of information.

What do you like most about living in South Africa?

I’m happiest when I’m doing the work I’ve prepared for all my life. Being in South Africa puts me in a place to do that. South Africa is undergoing a revolution that is exciting to watch. It’s a laboratory. It has the world’s most liberal constitution. The black party has solidified its hold on the country. It’s an experiment that’s working so far.

On a personal note, what is something that you think would surprise people about you?

I am an introvert.

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By Gwendolyn Quinn on 6/20/2006[read on] [3 comments]