Deadlines from the Edge: Images of War - Congo to Afghanistan

by Hamilton Wende

You must have seen them. Groups of them waiting for their heavy silver metal boxes to come off the luggage carousel at Heathrow, Rome, Paris, Tel Aviv, Johannesburg. They carry huge amounts of equipment into the world's worst hellholes. They are always trying to get into a place when everyone else is trying to get out. They sit, red-eyed and exhausted, staring out of the windows of a plane as it circles over yet another burning African capital, wondering what will greet them when they arrive at an airport filled with soldiers in camouflage uniform. They are journalists-the fragile uncertain antennae of our electronic civilisation.

291 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2004

About the author

Wende is a freelance writer and television producer based in Johannesburg. He is a regular contributor to From Our Own Correspondent on Radio 4 on BBC. He has also contributed to the BBC World Service programme Letter. He is a columnist for The Star in Johannesburg and his articles have appeared in many international and South African newspapers and magazines.

He has been a guest on The Editors on SABC, and has been a guest lecturer at the Department of Journalism at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, the English Department at the University of Cape Town and at the University of the Witwatersrand, at the Durban Institute of Technology and at the Cape Town Press Club, as well as the Muthaiga Club in Nairobi. He has also appeared on a number of radio and television programmes.

On television he has worked for a number of international networks including CNN, BBC, NBC, ABC (Australia), SBS (Australia), NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), Al Jazeera English and a number of others. He has covered 15 different wars in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.