Durban - Is there a future in journalism in the face of Artificial Intelligence (AI)?
That’s the question pondered by reporters and writers around the world. It has sparked a long-running strike by Hollywood writers and actors.
What can I still do that AI cannot do? Or what can I do better than AI can do?
I’m still not sure of the answer but what springs to mind is to try to be as original as possible in my reporting and tell stories with more creativity and involve experiences that are my own and not accessible on any database.
Wracking my brain for an example of how such a story may have been successful took me back to 1989, the year United Nations Resolution 435 took effect, paving the way for Namibia’s independence from South Africa.
I nearly fell over backwards when I saw the headline “Namibia Settlement Signed” on the front page of one of the main newspapers in the UK, where I was at the time. Similar headlines splashed across many other papers. I had attended Spanish classes in preparation for the next entry on my bucket list, South America, but returning to Southern Africa to report on this was a “no brainer”.
It was a matter of weeks before I swopped walking the cold streets under low grey cloud, nipping into pubs for half a pint just to keep warm with hitch-hiking the land between the Cunene and the Orange during the summer rainy season, getting to know it a bit before looking for a newspaper job.
My umbrella served against sun and the rain. I kept on playing the Johnny Clegg cassette I had bought in London to accompany me on the Tube. Only in Namibia I was able to watch a live show of “December African Rain” as I witnessed three simultaneous thunderstorms across a sea of semi-desert bush. It was, however, February when Namibia gets the most rain. The bush comes alive with creepers growing almost before one’s eyes across gravel roads.
The hitch-hiking habit continued after joining the energetic and youthful team on the Times of Namibia under editor Jean Sutherland. We had a vast country to cover and a limited budget. What better way was there to do so than, for the hitch-hikers among us, to head north to the more densely-populated communal areas; west to the desert coast; south to vast karakul lands and east towards Botswana? Plus the Caprivi Strip.
The paper’s hitch-hiking culture led me to flagging down a south-bound lorry carrying military materiel of the South African Defence Force out of the former operational area on the Angolan border when the driver, a civilian contractor, decided to have me as company from Otjiwarango.
Bertie had named his wagon “Windgat Express”. For 248km to Windhoek, he gave me a commentary on regional politics seen through his eyes as a trucker.
A fan of former president PW Botha, he had it in for Eugene Terre’Blanche’s Afrikaner Weerstansbeweging (AWB).
“On my way to Maputo I stopped off at the pub in my hometown, Carolina. There were these AWBs calling my leader, a p**s. I had one ‘dop’ and told them they weren’t even wearing proper khakis. Then I drove on.”
Driving on meant tackling the short but deadly dangerous route of 105km from Komatipoort to the Mozambique capital during the peak of the war between Frelimo and Renamo.
“It’s a war for food,” he explained. “Those people are so damn hungry. That’s why they attack trucks. It’s like a truck graveyard going through there.”
Bertie said he would stock up with as many loaves of bread as he could fit in the cab of “Windgat Express” whenever he tackled the 98km hell run.
“I just throw out a loaf to someone on the side of the road when I feel nervous,” he said.
Arriving alive in Maputo was always worth it, Bertie said. So much for having been a supporter of the party that forbade intimate encounters between races because he loved “those mulatto women”.
I ended my article for The Times of Namibia with the line: “Windgat Express loves Maputo too because diesel there is so much cheaper than in South Africa and Namibia.”
A week later Pretoria’s Administrator-General announced that the fuel price would increase.
My editor Jean sent me to Windhoek’s Katutura township to gather vox pops about how people felt about this.
One after the other they said: “But I know that in Mozambique diesel is cheaper.”
I knew that readers had enjoyed the article about “Windgat Express” but felt beyond journalistically satisfied that it may have contributed to people’s understanding of regional politics and economics.
Would AI have been privy to the details of my ride with Bertie and, coincidentally, added a punchline about fuel prices a week before the announcement of an increase?
Maybe. But hopefully not and, if not, I’d like journalism to ride into the future on board some version of a “Windgat Express”, reporting the world with original stories that can’t be sourced from any database.
The Independent on Saturday