Mkhuseli “Khusta” Jack Is Coming to the 2016 School of Authentic Journalism

At 27, He Organized the Consumer Boycott that Ended Apartheid in South Africa

By Greg Berger
Admissions Director, School of Authentic Journalism

May 9, 2016

Legendary South African resistance organizer Mkhuseli “Khusta” Jack will deliver the keynote remarks at the 2016 School of Authentic Journalism,to be held in Mexico July 4 to 7.

Legendary organizer Khusta Jack learns to shoot video at the 2013 School of Authentic Journalism

Khusta, in 1985 at the age of 27, organized the consumer boycott of white-owned businesses by the black South African majority that many view as the turning point in that decades-long battle to end racial segregation in his country.

This will be Khusta’s second round as a professor at the school (he served on the faculty in 2013). This year he’ll join North American environmental organizer Johanna Lawrenson, Mexican human rights defender Mercedes Osuna, investigative journalists Bill Conroy and Al Giordano and more than two dozen professors – many of them graduates of the school – in news writing, video production and other skills who will teach the 2016 class of 20 scholars.

This will be the thirteenth session of the School of Authentic Journalism since 2003, and will be held in Spanish in central Mexico in that first week of July. Completed applications for the scholarship are due May 22. The application can be obtained by sending an email to sol2016@narconews.com.

Khusta Jack as a young organizer in the forefront of the movement to end apartheid in South Africa.

Scholars and professors at the 2013 school produced a short video, “Two Struggles, One Story,” on the similarities between the strategies and tactics used by the South African anti-Apartheid movement and those of the Bolivian struggle against the privatization of water, featuring Khusta Jack and Oscar Olivera:

The school charges no tuition and trains journalists and communicators in media and organizing skill as well as the development of strategy and tactics that have made historic social movements successful.

For more information about this year’s school and the application process see the scholarship announcement at this link.

While this year’s school is in the Spanish language, the school’s founder and director Al Giordano is assembling an English language gathering in Mexico two weeks later to celebrate the sixteenth anniversary of Narco News and watch the 2016 Republican National Convention in the US (July 18-21) with a critical eye toward it’s nominee from a Mexican beach. Stay tuned for details on that event, which will include presentations by some School of Authentic Journalism professors and graduates and other friends of the project.

Lea Ud. el Artículo en Español

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