Karima Brown stood on the shoulders of giants in journalism
By Opinion
Marlan Padayachee
On Sunday, independent 24-hour news channel eNCA paid a fitting and final farewell to its TV host, Karima Brown, and did a reprise on some of her excellent interviews on her show,
The Fix, that relived the prowess of a brave-hearted commentator until Covid-19 ended her colourful and controversial career last week.
Coronavirus continued its ruthless march at the weekend, taking more high-profile lives of that of top business leader Peter Matlare and Durban’s first black mayor, Sipho Ngwenya, and scores of other victims.
Born Karima Semaar of Muslim faith in Mitchell’s Plain, Cape Town, on May 20, in death, Karima Brown shone a light on the country’s controversial and complex media landscape. At 53, she lost her battle to survive coronavirus.
Karima Brown was always more than a journalist. Her outspokenness ensured that she became the story herself on multiple occasions in a tumultuous career. In more than one instance she seemed to pay the price of being a highly confident woman in a society which still mistrusts such figures. But Brown would never let criticism – from the public, media colleagues or government – silence her voice. She remained to the last indefatigable and impossible to ignore.
Born Karima Semaar in Cape Town in 1967, Brown by most accounts did not so much have a “political awakening” as she grew up with politics already flowing through her veins. Her father, Achmat Semaar, was a respected Mitchells Plain community leader and ANC activist. Brown followed in his footsteps as a youth activist, becoming active in the Cape Youth Congress (Cayco) in the 1980s as a student at the University of the Western Cape. When the South African Students Congress (Sasco) was formed, she was part of the Western C