Thirteen Formative Years |
.jpg) LEAVING SOUTH AFRICA – Rand Daily Mail: Towards the end of 1961, during my final year at school in South Africa, I applied for and was awarded an American Field Service (AFS) International Scholarship, which enabled me to spend a year in the United States studying in a US high school. As a result, I decided I wouldn’t start university in 1962, as I’d intended to do, but instead work during the first half of 1962 before going to America. I was extremely fortunate to get a job on the Rand Daily Mail, Johannesburg’s liberal English-language morning newspaper. Although the job that I had was a lowly one – I was a copy-holder (i.e., a person who read from the original copy to a proof-reader who corrected the errors on the newspaper’s galley proofs) and my work hours were 5:30 pm till 2:00 am – I learnt a lot and really benefitted from the experience. I was employed by the Rand Daily Mail from January till July 1962, and this is a photograph of one of the front pages published during the first few weeks I worked on the paper. |