Interview with Angela Quintal

Angela Quintal spent five years at Rhodes University in the late 1980s, obtaining a BJourn and an LLB. As a student she set up the Rhodes University branch of Lawyers for Human Rights and was a student volunteer for their street law project. In addition, she was involved with the faculty of law magazine, Lawyers for Human Rights In Camera. In a role which merges her dual interests in journalism and human rights law, Angela has served as the Africa programme coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) since 2016. In this role she leads the CPJ’s fight to promote press freedom worldwide, defending the right of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal. Angela worked for over two decades as a journalist in South Africa before moving to New York with the CPJ. She has been the editor of the Mail & Guardian, The Witness and The Mercury and was presidential correspondent during Nelson Mandela’s term as South Africa’s first democratically elected president from 1994 to 1999. In a recent interview with the Daily Maverick, Angela noted that ‘I have never been about believing what I’m told without checking it out for myself – and reading and listening.’ The same article notes that the room to question, to read what you like and even the right to disagree aren’t things that she takes for granted, well aware that these freedoms have resulted in journalists being imprisoned, ‘disappeared’ and murdered.