On June 2, South African voters will return to the polls for just the second time since the end of apartheid to elect new leadership to replace retiring president Nelson Mandela. At a time of economic regression, rising crime, and growing political violence, the election will likely mark a major crossroads in the nation's inspiring but difficult transition from decades of racist, authoritarian rule to multiparty democracy.

This site examines that transition through the reporting and writing of eight students at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, who are venturing to South Africa in late March, 1999 to produce stories about the nation's struggles in advance of the elections. These stories, which also will be published in local and national periodicals in the U.S., span a range of critical topics, from the AIDS pandemic, Delayed Stress Syndrome, and problems of voter registration, to young South Africans' fascination and fondness for black American Hip-Hop music. The stories and accompanying photos will be filed for display on this web site throughout the month of April.

The students are enrolled in an International Reporting class at Berkeley, one of three courses offered this spring in which students are traveling overseas to report news and feature stories. (The other classes are traveling to Central America and Hong Kong.) The South Africa class is taught by Prof. Neil Henry, formerly of the Washington Post, and Jeffrey Bartholet, a Newsweek Magazine foreign correspondent currently based in Berkeley for the year as a Koret Foundation Teaching Fellow. Both Henry and Bartholet served as Africa Bureau Chiefs based in Kenya for their respective publications in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Partially funded by a grant from the Freedom Forum, the course's prime purpose is to expose the students to the challenges of foreign correspondence. We hope you enjoy their reporting, writing, and photography, and visit the projects listed under their names: Lynn Burke, Sherri Day, Jessie Deeter, Chris Jenkins, Vicki McClure, Suzanne Pardington, Nandi Pointer, and Erica Terry. (See About the Reporters.)

The class and instructors wish to thank South African journalist and John S. Knight Fellow Newton Kanhema, South African author Mark Mathabane, U.S. journalist and Africa scholar Michael Clough, and writer and author Adam Hochschild, for their valuable time and assistance in the development of this course. They also thank Jessie Seyfer for her creativity and expertise in constructing and maintaining this web site.

-- Neil Henry
March 1999