Comrade Editor
On life, journalism and the birth of Namibia
Gwen Lister
ISBN 9780624092568
Publication Date: 28 May 2021
Gwen Lister was born in South Africa. In 1976, she started at the Windhoek Advertiser in Namibia, adopting a critical stance towards the South African occupation of Namibia. By 1978, she and Hannes Smith started the Windhoek Observer. After being forced to resign from the Observer, in 1985, she starts an independent paper, The Namibian – the only paper to expose ongoing atrocities and
human rights violations of Namibians at the hands of South African security forces.
Lister’s memoir chronicles her years as a journalist fighting apartheid, and delves into what happened once that freedom was won for Namibia. It is a journey of an idealistic young woman trying to claim a place in a man’s world, one which put her in the eye of the storm in the struggle for independence of Africa’s last colony. It’s both a personal and professional journey. She threads the story of a colonial country’s transition to political freedom and beyond, with her own.
