LONG-TIME activist for a free press and free expression, Jeanette Minnie, died yesterday at the age of 61 in George after losing a long battle with cancer.
The Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa) issued a statement that South African Minnie will be remembered with great fondness and respect by all who met her and interacted with her.
Minnie was internationally recognised by many organisations as an African media expert in relation to media law and policy, independent regulation of the media and institutional and programme development of media associations and networks.
According to the Misa statement, Minnie’s body of work as a campaigner for press freedom and freedom of expression is unsurpassed.
Most recently, she co-edited Misa’s hard copy and online newspaper called the African Free Press on the state of media freedom and diversity in sub-Saharan Africa 25 years after the adoption of the Windhoek Declaration.
“During her tenure as the regional director of Misa, Misa provided media business training courses for members of the independent (non-state) media from all the SADC member states,” said the association.
Misa said it felt honoured to have enjoyed her counsel, and were grateful to her for her “unwavering dedication to the promotion of media freedom and freedom of expression in Africa and the world”.
Minnie was an international consultant, specialising in both freedom of expression and the development of democracy.
She was also known by the name of her consultancy service, Zambezi FoX.
‘FoX’ is her acronym for Freedom of Expression. She has been working as an independent consultant since 2000, and has travelled to over 50 countries in Africa, west and eastern Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia in the course of her career.
Her last service included being on the steering committee of the Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD) as an elected representative of its (sub-Saharan) Africa region. The GFMD is an international network of national and international media development organisations, including BBC Media Action, the Deutsche Welle Akademie, the International Centre for Journalists in Washington, Free Press Unlimited in the Netherlands, International Media Support in Denmark, the (continental) African Media Initiative and many others globally.
She also served as a member of the Working Group of the ‘SOS: Promote Public Broadcasting’ Campaign in South Africa. SOS is a coalition of media and civil society associations and experts that campaign for democratic policy and programme reforms at the country’s state-owned national broadcaster and in support of the community broadcasting sector in the country.
Minnie was also a member of the Media Freedom and Diversity (MFD) Focus Group of the Right2Know Campaign in South Africa, one of the most visible broad-based civil society activist groups in the country that focuses on the media and society’s rights to Freedom of Expression and Access to Information.
