Charlene Smith

A referee once wrote, “Charlene Smith is a powerful, highly skilled and experienced journalist, author and communications professional. She is adept at connecting people, from all walks of life, and at finding the right channels for messages. She has immense patience and love for people – no-one is unimportant or undeserving of her time or mentoring.”

I believe that no one is insignificant, everyone has a gift; each has an important story waiting to be told.

As a journalist, Nelson Mandela biographer, and a ghostwriter for businesspeople and politicians, I have been privileged to witness what is best in the great and had the time to ponder their flaws. I believe that it is in addressing flaws, or failure, that the exceptional is conceived. Never underestimate the importance of failure.

Writing is a privileged profession: people allow us into their lives, they reveal their hearts bit-by-bit, they let us scratch through their records, go where they fear, and in the process, they too, rediscover themselves.

Current affairs writers are witnesses to history and so our responsibility to truth-telling and fairness never leaves us.

Writing presumes an audience, even the most critical reader is our hero or heroine – you made the time. It is our task to use that time well.

Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, I grew up in Zambia. As a political journalist I covered anti-apartheid resistance in South Africa before becoming an activist against apartheid. In the process I earned the trust of some of the great of Southern Africa, Nobel Prize winners, Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nadine Gordimer among them. There were many more exceptional people I have been privileged to know, some among the most humble anywhere.
I also worked in Japan and Argentina for publications including the Los Angeles Times, Independent, and others. As a television documentary maker I worked with Tony Burman at Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Ted Koppel at ABC Nightline, and fine correspondents and crews at CBS 60 Minutes, BBC, NHK and others. That work taught me the importance of visual cues.

My books include Mandela, Mandela and America, Robben Island, Proud of Me: Speaking out Against Sexual Violence and HIV, Patricia de Lille, and Committed to Me, as well as chapters in the books of others.