Miller Matola
joined the International Marketing Council of South Africa as Chief Executive Officer on 1 April 2010, bringing with him dynamic strategic and operational skills. Matola began his career in education, and went on to project management which fuelled his interest in tourism. He joined South African Tourism in 1996 where he developed frameworks for hospitality service areas; he also led its Business Tourism Unit and later the Americas portfolio. Matola later became CEO of KwaZulu-Natal Tourism, and then took over the reins at the International Convention Centre Durban in 2006. He holds MA and MBA degrees and has completed the Wits Business School management advancement programme. He is currently completing a postgraduate Diploma in Company Direction.

Professor Rob Adam
is Chief Executive Officer of the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa), South Africa's statutory nuclear technology organization. He has held this position since 2006. Prof Adam also serves on the Council of the Academy of Sciences of South Africa, and chairs the steering Committee for the South African bid to host the Square Kilometre Array Radio Telescope.He holds the title of Extraordinary Professor of Physics at both the University of Pretoria and the University of South Africa. Before joining Necsa, Prof Adam was Director-General of the Department of Science and Technology, for 7 years. Prof Adam has held various academic positions in Europe and South Africa, and has published 30 refereed articles in theoretical physics.

Dr. Janet Cherry
is a humans rights activist, historian and academic. She is currently a senior lecturer in Development Studies at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitain University, and a trainer for the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies. She has worked as a researcher for the South African Democracy Education trust, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commision, and the International Council on Human Rights Policy, among others. She is a long standing member of the ANC and a former activist in the United Democratic Front( UDF), the End Conscription Campaign(ECC) and the National Union of South African Students(NUSAS). n

Dr Blessing-Miles Tendi
is a Zimbabwean researcher in African politics and the author of Making History in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe: Politics, Intellectuals and the Media. Tendi holds a DPhil and was educated at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. His research is principally focused on African intellectuals; the uses of history in African politics; the political role of African militaries; power-sharing in Africa; and human rights. He has subsidiary interests in international relations; genocide studies; counterfactuals in historical explanation; and the politics of land reform in Africa. Tendi is a regular contributor to the Guardian newspaper in the UK. He lectures at St Anthony’s College, Oxford University.

Dr. Mongane Wally Serote
is a South African poet and writer. He was born in Sophiatown, Johannesburg and went to school in Alexandra, Lesotho and Soweto. In 1973 he won the Ingrid Jonker Poetry prize. He went to study in New York as a Fulbright Scholar, obtaining a Fine Arts Degree at Columbia University in 1979. In 1993, he won the “Noma” Award for publishing in Africa. He has served as Chair of the Parliamentary Select Committee for Arts and Culture and formerly the CEO of Freedom Park, a national heritage site in Pretoria, which opened in 2009. His written works include several volumes of poetry, novels and a collection of essays.

George Lwanda
is a project economist in the advisory unit of the DBSA. He has an MSc in economic management and policy from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow and a post graduate diploma in international trade law and policy management from the University of Cape Town. George has worked as an economist of the Governance of Africa’s Resources Programme of the SAIIA, an economics consultant for DTZ Debenham Tie Lung in the United Kingdom and prior to that he was an economics and trade affairs adviser for the embassy of the the Kingdom of the Netherlands in South Africa.

Melissa King
has worked as a teacher, lecturer, writer and researcher across different sectors of education and training, including ABET, FET colleges, workplace contexts for skills development, schooling and higher education. She has a BA honours from the University of Natal, and a Higher Education Diploma and Master’s Degree in English Literature from UNISA. Her interest in the relationship between language and context finds expression in the Creative Lens section which she and Meg Pahad conceived and have edited together since it began, in Volume 9, November 2009.

Yusuf Patel
worked in national government for over 10 years. He is currently Executive Director at Basil Read and President of the South African Planning Institute (SAPI). Patel grew up as student and community development activist. In 2000 he joined national government and served as a Deputy Director General in the Department of Cooperative Governance. He recently completed an MSc in Financial Economics at the University of London (2009), adding to his MSc in Development Planning (1996) and BSc in Quantity Surveying (1994).

Mats Svensson
has been living in Jerusalem for several years. He started by working  in the Swedish Consulate. For the last two years in Jerusalem he has been walking the separation wall in the West Bank from south to north, following house demolitions in Jerusalem and settlement expansions, and documenting life under the Israeli occupation, apartheid and colonialism. He has previously worked in Congo, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Malawi, and South Africa.

Ian Liebenberg
is an associate professor in the Faculty of Military Science, Stellenbosch University. During the 1990s he was at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and lectured at the University of South Africa (Unisa) in sociology between 2000 and 2007. He was also a part time lecturer at the University of Pretoria and the University of Johannesburg. Between 1986 and 1990 he worked for the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa (IDASA).

John Jennings
graduated in Bacteriology, University Birmingham 1960 with a Ph.D in Clinical Immunology, University Manchester 1966. His research interest includes adult and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and fast-track drug discovery in medicine generally. In parallel with this scientific interest he maintains a focus on Palestinian resistance and negotiating strategy culminating in his website, www.palestinianresistance.com which provides a discussion forum for strategies relating to Palestinian resistance.

Gunnett Kaaf
is a member and activist of the ANC for over 20 years. He has held leardeship positions in the COSAS, ANCYL, the YCL and the SACP. He was deputy chairperson (1999-2004) of the Free State youth Commision. He currently serves in various PEC sub committees of the ANC and the SACP in the Free State. He is a regular contributor to the ANC and SACP publications. Gennett is Head of Communications in the Free State Provincial Treasury

Danny Schechter
is News Dissector Danny Schechter, a long time anti-apartheid activist produced 156 editions of  the South Africa Now series in the US about news that was censored in South Africa. He has written eleven books and made thirty documentary films. He also writes for Al Jazeera and other outlets. Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org