THERE are journalists who cover history. And then there are journalists who become it. Hameye Mahaman Cissé – Mahamane Hamèye Cissé in his native Mali – belongs, without contest, to that rarer and more precious second category. A founding force of the independent press in West Africa, a warrior for media freedom across the continent, a training mentor who shaped dozens of the region’s finest reporters, and a selfless soul who gave more to African journalism than African journalism will ever be able to fully repay: Hameye was, in the fullest sense of that worn phrase, a hero.
To those who knew him – and the fraternity of African editors who worked alongside him spans from Dakar to Nairobi, from Bamako to Johannesburg – the word hero is not flattery. It is a reckoning. It is the only word large enough.
| “Press freedom is not a gift from the powerful to the weak. It is a right we hold in trust, for the people, always for the people.” |
