He was offered a post with Reuters at the UN but chose instead to settle in London, with his English girlfriend, later wife, Jenny, whom he had met in Dar es Salaam.From Reuters' "first black staffer" he became, after a short time in the African Service, still a trailblazer, BBC Television's first black journalist, on the current affairs programme 24 Hours. He later moved to ITN, starting work there on the same day in 1973 as Trevor Macdonald, who became the first black newsreader.Journalism was more than a career to Maimane, it was a calling, one that his clergyman father had encouraged him to follow after his boyhood in Lady Selborne township, near Pretoria, and St Peter's, the Community of the Resurrection school in Rosettenville, Johannesburg. St Peter's was made famous by its association with such as Trevor Huddleston (who introduced Maimane to Drum in 1952), Oliver Tambo and Desmond Tutu.Maimane's closest intimates were among the Drum writers, whose world is brought alive in his friend "Bloke" Modisane's Blame Me On History (1963). He holidayed with absentee plantation owners and acted on the assumption that even the ugliest slave-herders simply did not understand what they were doing.
Geldof and Bono are the Wilberforces of Make Poverty History, appealing to men like Bush and Berlusconi on the assumption they simply don't understand the harm their system is doing.It might be stomach-churning, but it is worthwhile provided it happens in parallel with men like Thomas Clarkson, who fought as part of a more radical movement. William Wilberforce was an ultra-conservative who opposed the extension of the vote beyond a tiny aristocratic elite. I understand their concern: at what point does praising the leaders of the rich world for small steps in the right direction actually turn into a whitewash for the people at the head of the system doing so much harm to Africa?Yet the anti-slavery movement succeeded because it had people who worked both within established power structures urging gradual change, and outside the system fighting for more revolutionary solutions. In the next few weeks, I fear the Make Poverty History coalition will begin to fray. Bob Geldof and Bono will almost certainly welcome the inches of progress made by this G8, and the more radical wing of the movement will turn on them. This will have to happen again - with the rich world's farmers and corporations especially - if Africa is to succeed.But the anti-slavery campaigns also showed that it is essential to build the broadest coalition possible.
The best banner I saw in Edinburgh said simply, "Imagine it was your child." Never underestimate the revolutionary power of empathy: it can make people campaign against their own interests on behalf of people half a world away who they will never meet. The population of Sheffield in the 1780s made their wealth primarily by manufacturing scythes, knives and razors, most of which were sold to slave traders. Yet they signed a mass petition in 1789 saying "[we] consider the consider the case of the nations of Africa as [our] own." The anti-slavery movement ultimately cut British GDP by 1.8 per cent for more than four decades - but morality trumped individual economic interest. Will all these crimes really look in the end so different to the crimes of our great-great-grandfathers? Yes, there are dictators and corruption in some parts of Africa (although certainly not all). But to use this as an excuse to carry on doing our own terrible harm to the continent is like beating up an old woman and then explaining that she already had cancer so it's not your fault she's dead.The anti-slavery movement showed - for the first time in human history - that people are capable of tirelessly fighting for somebody else's rights. Today, the rich world is demanding that African people repay the debts of long-gone dictators, at the expense of building schools and hospitals. Today, the rich world is knowingly causing the planet to slowly, silently warm, already provoking crop failure and looming Darfur-style resource wars across Africa.The report on this one-sided boxing match - Mike Tyson versus Dot Cotton - could continue for a long-time.