DAILY MAVERICK featuring ANNELI KAMFER
DAILY MAVERICK
featuring ANNELI KAMFER
20Twenties: Eve of Destruction — how it came into being
by Tiara Walters & Branko Brkic
The burning world, it is explodin’,
Violence flarin’, fear & loathin’,
You’re bad enough to scream, but your throat is chokin’,
You don’t believe in oil, but it’s your car that’s smokin’,
And even the Jordan river has no water floatin’,
But you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
Ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.
Don’t you understand, what I’m trying to say?
And can’t you feel the fears I’m feeling today?
When the threshold is crossed, it’s the end of the game,
There’ll be nothing to save when the world is aflame,
Take a look around you, girl, it’s bound to scare you, boy,
And tell me over and over and over again my friend,
Ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.
Yeah, my blood’s so mad, feels like coagulatin’,
I’m sittin’ here, just contemplatin’,
I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation,
Handful of senators don’t pass legislation,
And marches alone don’t bring the solution,
When the human race is so close to dissolution’,
This whole crazy world is one big confusion,
And you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
Ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.
Think of all the coal that’s blazing your soul
Then look at your own town spinning down the hole
Ah, you may leave Earth, for four days in space,
But when you return, the same old scorching place,
The poundin’ of the drums, the fright and disgrace,
You can bury your dead, but don’t leave a trace,
Hate your next door neighbor, but don’t forget to say your grace
And you tell me over and over and over and over again my friend,
You don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.
No, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.
The burning world, it is explodin’,
Violence flarin’, fear & loathin’,
You’re bad enough to scream,
but your throat is chokin’,
You don’t believe in oil,
but it’s your car that’s smokin’,
And even the Jordan river has
no water floatin’,
But you tell me over and over and
over again my friend,
Ah, you don’t believe
we’re on the eve of destruction.
Don’t you understand,
what I’m trying to say?
And can’t you feel the fears
I’m feeling today?
When the threshold is crossed,
it’s the end of the game,
There’ll be nothing to save
when the world is aflame,
Take a look around you, girl,
it’s bound to scare you, boy,
And tell me over and over and
over again my friend,
Ah, you don’t believe
we’re on the eve of destruction.
Yeah, my blood’s so mad,
feels like coagulatin’,
I’m sittin’ here, just contemplatin’,
I can’t twist the truth,
it knows no regulation,
Handful of senators,
don’t pass legislation,
And marches alone,
don’t bring the solution,
When the human race is
so close to dissolution’,
This whole crazy world,
is one big confusion,
And you tell me over and over and
over again my friend,
Ah, you don’t believe
we’re on the eve of destruction.
Think of all the coal
that’s blazing your soul
Then look at your own town
spinning down the hole
Ah, you may leave Earth,
for four days in space,
But when you return,
the same old scorching place,
The poundin’ of the drums,
the fright and disgrace,
You can bury your dead,
but don’t leave a trace,
Hate your next door neighbor,
but don’t forget to say your grace
And you tell me over and over and
over and over again my friend,
You don’t believe
we’re on the eve of destruction.
No, you don’t believe
we’re on the eve of destruction.
Concept and updated lyrics by Branko Brkic & Tiara Walters
Video by Bernard Kotze
Concept and updated lyrics by
Branko Brkic & Tiara Walters
Video by Bernard Kotze
Song produced by Theo Crous & Bernard Kotze
Mastered by Reuben Cohen
Song produced by
Theo Crous & Bernard Kotze
Mastered by Reuben Cohen
Vocals – Anneli Kamfer
Guitars – Albert Frost
Harmonica – Dave Ferguson
Bass – Schalk Joubert
Drums – Kevin Gibson
Vocals – Anneli Kamfer
Guitars – Albert Frost
Harmonica – Dave Ferguson
Bass – Schalk Joubert
Drums – Kevin Gibson
Daily Maverick’s Our Burning Planet – high-end journalism to address humanity’s greatest challenge
With Cape Town’s Day Zero as its wake-up call, Daily Maverick established Our Burning Planet. In the three years since then, the specialist climate crisis reporting unit has drawn attention to the head-on collision between bad governance and climate change, showing how the country is being reshaped by this phenomenon.
Daily Maverick is one of the largest independent news media in South Africa and one of the most respected in the media landscape. Founded in 2009 as a start-up of five people, it has grown into an organisation with more than 120 staff at a time when the number of journalists in the country has shrunk by half.
Its vision to “defend truth” makes it beloved by its readers and revered, and perhaps feared, by politicians and the people in power who it covers.
Daily Maverick is a mission-driven organisation that is intent on ensuring its readers “know more” and “know better”.
Three years ago, Daily Maverick began running a series called “Our Burning Planet”.
Born out of the warning that was the once-in-628-years drought that threatened Cape Town’s water supply, the series was our wake-up call that, as media, it was irresponsible to report on human-generated global warming with circumspection. We had to admit: we are heating up the planet — and it was time to do something about it.
And so a commitment was made that we will “concentrate on the head-on collision between bad governance and climate change”, and show how the country is being reshaped by this phenomenon.
Daily Maverick embarked on a process to build what is now considered the biggest climate crisis reporting unit in a mainstream media organisation in South Africa, potentially in southern Africa.
Our Burning Planet is not an activist effort, but rather an example of high-end journalism addressing humanity’s greatest challenge and bringing about social impact off the back of editorial focus on key areas of concern.
Its vision is for more members of the public, civil society, business leadership and government to better understand the impact and urgency of responding to the climate crisis.
Music journalism in the form of Eve of Destruction is its latest effort to achieve that. OBP/DM
NB: John Lewis quote at the end of the video refers to a saying from Jewish ethical tradition:
(יד) הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר, אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי. וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי. וְאִם לֹא עַכְשָׁיו, אֵימָתַי
(14) He [Rabbi Hillel] used to say: If I am not for me, who will be for me? And when I am for myself alone, what am I? And if not now, then when?
Sign up for the Our Burning Planet newsletter.
As the co-founder of the unit, soon after we decided on the name, Kevin was concerned that we would be perceived as “doomerist”. So why, back in October 2018, did we stick with “Our Burning Planet”? The simple answer could be found in the science, which even then was as terrifying as it was true.
Four years later, that truth has become self-evident. Wildfires, floods, storms, droughts, species extinction, biodiversity loss, chemical pollution of land, air and sea — all of it now happening at the scale and speed of a big-budget apocalypse blockbuster.
Except, of course, this time the credits don’t roll; in this movie, there is no leaving the theatre.
Like many of you, Kevin is a parent. His daughter is nine years old, his son, five. He has been a journalist for 25 years, and the most valuable thing he can offer his kids (aside from his love and presence) is time on the job.
He has published two books of investigative non-fiction — the first, Ways of Staying (Picador Africa in South Africa, 2009 / Granta in the UK and Canada, 2010), questioned whether the violent crime in my country was a necessary tax of its history; the second, Continental Shift: A Journey into Africa’s Changing Fortunes (Jonathan Ball in South Africa / Granta in the UK and Canada, 2016), was an 18-country, nine-year exploration of the forces shaping Africa in the 21st century.
Supported by assignments for the likes of The Guardian, Granta Magazine and Daily Maverick, these books were a decade-long initiation into the ravages of colonialism, conflict and corruption.
Looking back, though, he believes they were merely preparation for what was coming next — the story of planetary collapse, the most urgent story ever told.
Investigative journalism, when done right, can be the slingshot that fells the most rapacious Goliaths; it can bring down presidents, it can cripple corporations. It’s a great job, sure, but today — more than ever — it’s a response to the call of the coming generations.
Ethan van Diemen is a South African data and investigative journalist based in Cape Town. Formerly based in Johannesburg as an Open Society Foundation Investigative Journalism Fellow, his reporting is at the intersection of the science of climate change, energy and sustainable development in sub-Saharan Africa. He is part of the first cohort of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network.
His coverage of environmental crises is based on a recognition of the existential nature of the multisectoral threat it poses to human life and wellbeing, as well as its impacts on nature, broadly defined. Implicit in this recognition is the knowledge that humans, as agents of change, are not powerless in responding to the challenge.
Ethan’s reporting is premised on the belief that, in this decisive decade, excellent journalism that cuts to the heart of the issues and that investigates, reports on and informs the public about the scope, nature, causes and solutions of and to the environmental crisis and humanity’s role in both causing and ameliorating it, is broadly in the public interest and serves to empower human beings as agents of change.
Tiara Walters is an investigative journalist/author based in the Antarctic gateway port of Cape Town. The first South African female journalist to oversummer in Antarctica in 2009, her writing has featured in the American Polar Society’s Polar Times, the Lonely Planet Guide to Antarctica, PBS, Daily Maverick’s Our Burning Planet and more.
A defender of the right to be cold, Walters has a special interest in the governance of the melting poles. In 2021, she revealed the moment Russian LNG vessels crossed paths on the Arctic’s thawing Northern Sea Route for the first time in winter, without icebreakers.
Months later, she exposed Russia’s two-decade record of looking for Antarctic fossil fuels. Since then, she has continued to hold polar powers to account.
These efforts have exposed Germany’s media ban at the 2022 Antarctic Treaty meeting, showed why China blocked a penguin rescue plan and broke the news that rampant Antarctic tourists were likely to breach the 100,000-mark for the first time in a single season.
She also co-adapted Eve of Destruction with Daily Maverick editor-in-chief Branko Brkić.
“Earth’s complexity, and the vested interests that threaten it, drive my work,” Walters says. “Through music journalism, I hope to continue what a mentor taught me: take away the excuse of saying, ‘I did not know’.”
Onke Ngcuka is an environmental journalist with Daily Maverick’s Our Burning Planet unit.
She has covered topics ranging from the effects of the climate crisis on mental health to being in Glasgow, Scotland, to report on the environmental conference, COP26, as well as doing on-the-ground reporting of the devastating KZN floods, and everything in between.
Most recently, Ngcuka was in Nairobi, Kenya, covering the United Nations Environment Assembly-5, where the first legally-binding draft treaty to end plastic pollution was adopted.
Prior to her being an environmental reporter, Ngcuka completed her internship at Reuters news agency where she reported on general and financial news, alongside being a Reuters TV producer. She also briefly freelanced as a tech reporter for Quartz Africa and Rest of World.
She has just completed a fellowship on climate justice with JournAfrica! and the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation, for which she attended a workshop in Berlin, Germany. Ngcuka also has some of her work on the fellowship’s blog, “Climate Central”.
Ngcuka completed her studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg where she earned an honours in journalism and media studies, as well as an undergraduate degree in Politics, International Relations and Psychology.
She plans on furthering her knowledge of the climate crisis and climate justice by investigating and writing on the link between climate, people and food.
Like most people, Julia used to have a general, if vague, understanding of what the climate crisis was. In the back of her mind, she knew that temperatures are rising, that she should be recycling and that coal was bad news.
But after meeting three young South African climate activists who featured in her thesis documentary for her media honours at UCT, she began to learn about the immediate and disproportionate impact the climate crisis was having on communities in South Africa, and how – despite historically being the least emitters of greenhouse gases – the country is a climate hotspot and warming at twice the global average, and does not have the resources to deal with extreme climate events.
She realised that as a journalist, one of the most important things she could be doing is informing the public on the urgency and impacts of this crisis, and holding the government accountable for its dogged persistence in exploiting fossil fuels and destroying biodiversity.
As a junior journalist, she has leveraged her writing, researching, interviewing, and photographic skills to compile meaningful stories about the direct impact of the climate crisis on vulnerable communities most susceptible to the impacts of climate change, educate the public in accessible terms on the physical science climate change, and report on the government’s detrimental relationship with fossil fuels.
Tembile is a journalistic all-rounder (having written sports, politics, hard news) with over 10 years of experience. Over a year ago, he began to understand more about the climate crisis and its effects on our beautiful planet.
With his love for community news and telling human interest stories, he decided to tell climate stories through communities most affected by climate change. Through his writing, he has reflected on the human experiences of the climate crisis and how it affects their livelihood. He believes in writing climate change stories that will have an impact on people, educating them and bringing awareness to those who are still in the dark.
Tony is a freelance environment journalist from Durban. Growing up in Kenya and Zimbabwe, he was exposed to wide open, wild spaces from an early age. After toying with the idea of a career in nature conservation, archaeology or as a wildlife vet, he instead ended up writing about many of the issues close to his heart.
His interests cover a broad range of environmental problems, including the poisoning of people and nature by the relentless streams of pollution entering air, water and soil across the world.
He wrote for The Mercury newspaper and other Independent Media group titles for three decades, but abandoned that ship in 2016 following the steady collapse of editorial standards under Iqbal Survé’s Sekunjalo regime.
Carnie’s determination to continue writing about the global environmental crisis has been shaped and inspired by a range of activists including Dr Vandana Shiva, Anil Agarwal, Dr Ian Player and Dr Peter Montague (a relatively obscure American historian and journalist dedicated to environmental health and justice).
During a brief visit to Washington DC, Carnie was determined to meet Montague and they ended up sitting for several hours on a park bench discussing the future of the environmental justice movement.
It was during this meeting in 1999 that Montague predicted the emerging climate crisis would become the turning point in humanity’s relationship with the Earth.
Don is an investigative journalist, photographer and travel writer who, some time back, realised he knew little about the natural world. So he set out to discover it. This took him to five continents – including Antarctica – and resulted in six books on natural history and hundreds of articles. He has degrees in criminology, political science and African history.
His focus regarding the human-induced climate crisis is the impact it has on the living world and the fabric which connects it. Essentially, biodiversity. We are losing wild rangelands, the ocean’s life systems and avian species. His core focus is animal/human interaction, welfare and the impact of issues like trophy hunting, range limitation, animal wellbeing and governance of wild biomes.
What very often drives him is anger at the damage humans do to the planet and its species. And compassion for those who do not have a voice. Where he can be, he is that voice.
Books include: Gang Town, which won the City Press Tafelberg Non-Fiction Award; Writing Left, a biography of the journalist Ruth First; Voices of Liberation – The Brotherhoods, Gangs, Rituals & Rites of Passage; Rainmaker, a novel shortlisted for the 2009 European Union Literary Award; Natural Selections; African Journeys; Just Add Dust; Loveletters to Africa; Blue Ice: Travels in Antarctica; The Woman who Lived in a Tree and Other Perfect Strangers; Wild as it Gets; The Last Elephants (with Colin Bell).
Africa’s last Lions (with Colin Bell) is in process. Inside Kruger Park (with Helena Kriel) is in process.
Jillian Green is Deputy Editor of Daily Maverick and Managing Editor of Our Burning Planet.
Based in Johannesburg, Jillian has been part of the South African media landscape for over 20 years. Having written on a variety of topics including health, science and HIV/Aids, she now spends her days working behind the scenes leading and motivating teams of talented journalists to keep shining a light in dark places and exposing malfeasance in all its guises.
Her work on Our Burning Planet is in part motivated by her two children aged 14 and 16 who, if the climate crisis is not arrested now, face a world too horrible to contemplate. There is no planet B for humanity.
She believes future generations are depending on the adults today to think beyond themselves and do what’s best for those who will come after.
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