Gwen Lister
| Gwen Lister | |
|---|---|
| Born |
5 December 1953 East London, South Africa |
| Nationality | Namibian |
| Occupation | journalist |
| Organization |
Windhoek Observer (1978–84) The Namibian (1985–present) |
| Known for | press freedom activism, opposition to apartheid |
Gwen Lister (born 5 December 1953 in East London, South Africa) is a Namibian journalist, publisher, apartheid opponent and press freedom activist.
Growing up under the apartheid system, she resolved to fight it as an adult, and concluded that Namibia would be a more effective place to do so than South Africa. She attended University of Cape Town in 1975, receiving a bachelor's degree. After graduation, she went to work as a journalist at Namibia's Windhoek Advertiser as a political correspondent. She later left the paper after interference in her reporting by her editors.
She and fellow journalist Hannes Smith began the independent weekly Windhoek Observer in 1978. As political editor, Lister wanted to give SWAPO, Namibia's liberation movement, "a 'human face', showing the people, including whites, that they were not the 'terrorists' and 'communists' and the 'black threat' that the colonial regime made them out to be through their blanket propaganda." She also criticised South Africa's apartheid practices in Namibia, drawing the government's anger. The Observer was officially banned in May 1984 after Lister travelled to Zambia to report on Namibian independence talks. Though the ban was lifted after an appeal to Pretoria's Publications Appeal Board, Observer management demoted her for having brought it on, triggering Lister's resignation and a walkout of the newspaper's staff.
Following her resignation, Lister did freelance work for BBC News and for South Africa's Capital Radio 604. In December 1984, Lister exposed a document authorising the interception of her mail by South African authorities, causing her to be arrested and detained for a week under the Official Secrets Act. The IPI described the arrest as "an obvious attempt to stop her from setting up a new paper". Police confiscated her passport and required her to report three times a week.
In August 1985, Lister began a new independent newspaper, The Namibian. Her reporting on human rights abuses by South African forces brought new anger from the government and an advertising boycott by the white business community. In 1987, South African authorities banned the paper from printing a photograph of the corpse of an insurgent strapped to an armoured personnel carrier; Lister challenged the ban in court.
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