Journalist, editor and broadcaster Karima Brown has died from Covid-19.
In a statement, her family said Brown was not just a “prolific and well-known journalist and commentator, with deep footprints in print and broadcast media, but also and more importantly a well-loved friend, mentor, mother, colleague, daughter and confidante to countless people throughout a life lived fully and with deep commitment to her most cherished values and principles”.
They said they were “enormously proud” of her fierce determination to bring about a more just, inclusive and anti-racist South Africa. “This determination also shaped her fearless approach to journalism. She was driven by a conviction that journalism must be in service of justice”.
Brown died from COVID-19-related complications earlier on Thursday after she was admitted to hospital last month. She was laid to rest at the Westpark Cemetary in Johannesburg.
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