Defend Truth

Marianne Merten answers 20 Questions

20 Questions We Ask Everyone

Award-winning Marianne Merten  answers our questions.

Marianne Merten

 journalist

Just one? The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Water, whether that’s the ocean or a river in the bush

Tickiebox aka pay phone, once a main communication tool that just chowed that small change.

Many. Often private like someone taking out time to say “Thanks” or “Well Done” for a piece. Sometimes public like winning the inaugural politics category of the Vodacom Journalist of the Year regional Western Cape awards.

Ariel by Aki Kaurismäki.

Cyril Ramaphosa – farmer, businessman, politician, president.

“I will revert to you in due course accordingly” stock reply by many, actually most, government spin-doctors..

I do bake a mean cake or two.

How are you today?

 (to borrow from Advocate Thuli Madonsela) – Gogo Dlamini, who has and continues to sacrifice for her family to life a better life against the odds.

Too many to name.

Luckily, democratic South Africa doesn’t have a death row, so I don’t have to confess to wanting a cheesecake (no, not talking a slice here).

Plenty of odd jobs, but there were good reasons like getting pocket money that meant the house sitting and baby sitting, and later the waitressing and bar tendering, were worth it.

Trump saying “Sorry, so sorry, really sorry, tremendously sorry…” for the wall, the anti-human rights policies, and meaning it?

 “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.” (Martin Niemöller)
 

Nahh, I’m no tattletale.