BBC Reporter's Notebook

BBC in Canada looking for stories

Why do South African newspapers always discuss the alleged “genocide” against white farmers, while ignoring the far more bloody and systematic campaign of violence against impoverished Somali shopkeepers in Soweto or around Cape Town? Why do the television crews still gravitate towards foreign humanitarian workers during emergencies, with their convenient planes and well-stocked compounds? And - in the same spirit - how much unquestioning focus should one give to the “Africa Rising” narrative, so well articulated by the social-media-wired, urban, aspirational middle classes of Nairobi or Lagos? Because the truth, hard-learned on dirt roads and neglected corners, is that the majority - the often-voiceless majority - on this continent are still facing daunting challenges: from soaring prices, to unemployment, wretched schools and hospitals, an absence of justice, and most pressingly of all - insecurity. That applies in the beleaguered townships of South Africa, in the forests of the Central African Republic, the besieged towns of north-eastern Nigeria, the slums of Monrovia, and on the endless battlefields of South Sudan. Of course there is plenty going impressively, fantastically right here - the arc of history bending towards optimism and all that. But it seems to me that a bias towards the powerless and voiceless is a reasonable and necessary one - especially when they still seem to be in the majority.