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www.thevillagenews.co.za
3 March 2021
LOVING A LITTLE LOCAL AT THE VILLAGE NEWS!
Elaine Davie – A voice for the voiceless Writer Hedda Mittner
T
he Forum of Community Journalists (FCJ) Excellence Awards, held annually in July – and among the many events that were derailed last year by Covid-19 – was finally presented online on Friday to honour the shining stars of South Africa’s community press for 2019. Having won the coveted Newspaper of the Year award in the independent commercial newspaper category for 2017, The Village NEWS was the runner-up for the second year in a row, and in the Columnist category, Murray Stewart was the runner-up for the third time. The Village NEWS also won third place in the Front Page category, while Taylum Meyer was a finalist for General Photography, a category in which she placed second the year before. This was good news indeed for the whole team after a year of hard knocks, but there was even more reason to rejoice when it was announced that our journalist Elaine Davie was the winner of both Hard News and the most coveted award of all – Journalist of the Year for 2019. When selecting the recipient of this sought-after accolade, the FCJ judges were looking for qualities such as versatility, the eloquent use of language, and a wide variety of interesting topics. They found exactly that, and more, in the stories submitted by Elaine, who has been a valuable contributor to The Village NEWS for just over three years, keeping our readers entertained and informed on everything happening in the Overstrand, from community issues to education, the environment, books and the arts. The judges made particular mention of Elaine’s striking reports on abalone poaching, commenting that her articles “all show initiative and the ability to stick with a story until the end, answering important questions, all highly relevant to the community”. As someone who says she’s “adopted causes all my life”, one of Elaine’s strengths is her dedication to bringing issues affecting our communities into the open, while taking great care to present all sides of a story. She feels strongly about giving a voice to the voiceless and presenting the perspective of the disenfranchised – which goes back to her years as a radio journalist during the apartheid years. Above all, Elaine’s stories are about people. It therefore came as no surprise to us when she won the Human Interest category at the FCJ Excellence Awards for 2018. “When I do an interview, one of my main aims is to get below the surface and capture the essence of the person I am speaking to without their feeling I am invading their privacy,” she says. “I truly believe that everyone has a story to tell that needs to be heard, even if they don’t necessarily think so themselves.” Elaine’s ability to connect with people has perhaps more than a little to do with the fact that she was a Lifeline counsellor and trainer for six years (“It taught me to listen for the unexpressed,” she says) – not to mention her extraordinarily diverse life experience. “You know
the Chinese proverb, ‘Be careful what you wish for’… Well, when I was young and people asked me what I wanted to do with my life, I always used to say, ‘I want to experience everything’. And I have – and looking back it’s been exhausting!” she laughs. Born in Springs in 1940 (yes, it’s hard to believe that Elaine turned 80 last year!), her family later moved to Pretoria, via the Northern Transvaal. During her school years she had a strong aptitude for languages and drama, and participating in school plays and editing the school newspaper were what gave her the greatest fulfilment. “As a child I was fortunate to have had two grandparents who were voracious readers and parents who, each in their own way, were storytellers. I myself had an unreasonable obsession to know what it would be like to live in someone else’s skin. When I left school I was torn between studying drama and journalism, both of which fed into this passion.” In the end, she chose drama and, after matriculating from Pretoria Girls High, Elaine went off to the Maas Phillips College of Speech and Drama in Cape Town (now the Cape Academy of Dramatic Art), where she relished her newfound independence. Cape Town was also where she met Mike Malherbe, who was to become her husband a few years later, and father to her three children – Neil, Geraldine and Robin. Back in Pretoria, Elaine taught drama at Carmel Primary School for six years before returning to her theatre roots when she joined the former PACT (Performing Arts Council of the Transvaal). “This was during the seventies and I worked with lovely people like Janice Honeyman and Robin Malan. Head of Drama, Mannie Manim, went on to co-found The Market Theatre with Barney Simon in 1976.” Elaine not only wrote children’s plays but also developed educational programmes for PACT Playwork, the Drama Department’s Theatre-in-Education Company. Since leaving PACT in 1978, and indeed throughout her life, she has continued to write, from magazine features, to internal newsletters, marketing material, children’s plays, television scripts and academic conference papers. Although she derived immense satisfaction from her work, neither her personal nor her professional life was always plain sailing. She got divorced, remarried and divorced again; more than once she found herself “without a job or a place to stay”. But Elaine’s courage and resilience never faltered. When a former PACT colleague, then
working for the SABC, asked Elaine one day: “Have you ever thought of doing radio work?” her answer was that she had not, but was willing to give it a try. That decision led to a whole new career in radio journalism during the turbulent eighties. “As a radio broadcaster and producer, I covered a wide range of topics including conservation, science, the arts, current affairs and community issues, during which I had the privilege to meet and interview people at all levels of society who were generous enough to allow me a glimpse into their lives,” she says. Among the ground-breaking work she did during this last decade of the apartheid era were the first radio interviews with prominent political figures such as Helen Suzman and Mangosuthu Buthelezi to be broadcast by the SABC, and a radio doccie titled ‘Ubuntu’, which saw Elaine visiting several townships and interviewing men, women and children to gain an insight into their lives and struggles. “No white people went into the townships in the ‘80s and I realised that the one half of our country had no idea how the other half lived,” she says. Another initiative was a monthly regional round-up programme, for which Elaine travelled to many small towns in the old Transvaal like Barberton, Rustenburg and White River, where she did live interviews with interesting locals. “Unfortunately, many of my stories for the SABC were canned for political reasons and my integrity became so compromised that I eventually had to leave.” This was another turning point in Elaine’s eventful life, which led to her involvement with SOS Children’s Villages. “I think I was only appointed because they were starting a new village in Mamelodi and they needed a general go-to skivvy. I ended up supervising the building, buying the furniture, appointing and training the staff…” Once the Village was up and running as a haven for orphaned and abandoned children, Elaine went on to launch three outreach programmes which included an ECD project. Being subjected to strong-arm apartheid tactics made this a scary time for Elaine, though, especially as she was living alone. “While I was working for SOS in Mamelodi and even afterwards, I was constantly harassed by the Security Police. My phone was tapped; I received threatening phone calls in the early hours of the morning and was told I was being watched night and day. One day when I came home from work I found that my kitchen door had literally been chopped down with an axe and my house was completely trashed.”
Undaunted, Elaine went on, as national co-ordinator, to establish the SA Association for Early Childhood Educare (SAAECE) – formerly the SA Nursery Schools Association, which was reorganising to become more inclusive. Once again, she travelled a lot and was instrumental in establishing branches all over the country. During a trip to America by invitation of the US Embassy to attend an ECD conference in Washington DC, she also visited ghetto communities in several urban centres, from New York to Boston, Detroit and Memphis. Later, she served as a member of the National Committee for Children’s Rights, working closely with Judge PJJ Olivier to draw up the draft Children’s Rights Charter, which was later expanded and incorporated into the Constitution of South Africa. In the early nineties Elaine started her own ECD training programme called Small Beginnings and launched seven training centres around the Northern and Eastern Transvaal. Her success at securing funding from local corporates and international foundations led to Liberty Life recruiting her to set up the Southern African Grantmakers’ Association (SAGA), to bring funders, government departments and NGOs together. Among SAGA’s objectives was implementing a community foundation pilot programme, publishing a donor directory, developing a training programme for corporate social investment practitioners – and convening seminars and conferences on specific sectors. Eventually, Elaine decided it was time for a change of focus and this time she set her sights on Knysna, where she’d spent many happy holidays as a child, and also with her own family when her children were young. Having settled into her new home, she decided to open a craft art gallery. “I’d always been interested in the crafts I found in the rural areas I’d travelled to and I thoroughly enjoyed sourcing the stock, but unfortunately Knysna was a very seasonal town, much like Hermanus, and I was very reliant on tourists to keep the business sustainable.” In order to supplement her income, Elaine worked as an estate agent. “I absolutely hated it!” she laughs. Having finally decided to sell her gallery, Elaine relocated to Greyton, where she got involved with an NGO for rhino conservation. From there she made her way in 2010 to Kleinmond after seeing an advert for a wooden toy-making project run by Mthimkhulu Village. When that closed down she joined first Camphill School and then Enlighten Education Trust as fundraiser/PRO, as well as continuing to do free-lance writing and editing. “In my last three years at The Village NEWS, I have come full circle and been given the opportunity to give a voice to members of this dynamic and diverse Overstrand community, to contribute some insights and at the same time to pay tribute to them and to the beautiful place we share,” she says. We are indeed privileged to have Elaine on our team. To bag both the Hard News award and Journalist of the Year award among stiff competition from all across the country – and at the age of 80, nogal! – is no mean feat. Congratulations, Elaine! We are immensely proud of you.
