Scorched

ABOUT the author

A Potted History 
Leonie Joubert is a science writer and journalist whose books include Scorched, Boiling Point and Invaded. And she recently had a chapter appear in Opinion Pieces by South African Thought Leaders, edited by Max du Preez.

She was the 2007 Ruth First Fellow, was listed in the Mail & Guardian’s 200 Young South Africans You Must Take To Lunch (2008), and was named the 2009 SAB Environmental Journalist of the Year (print/internet category). Leonie has received two Honorary Sunday Times Alan Paton Non-Fiction Awards (in 2007 and 2010 for Scorched and Invaded).

The Next Big Thing
For the moment, she’s gone to ground while she writes her next book, a vivid journey through the lives of several southern African homes to show how poverty threatens food security for the region’s urban poor.

Together with photographer Eric Miller, she visits a migrant mine worker in Maseru, a white plakkerkamp in Pretoria, a retired school headmistress in Alice, an Indian occupational therapist in Durban and a community in De Aar that has one of the highest reported rates of foetal alcohol syndrome in the world, amongst others. These stories show that what keeps homes food secure is about so much more than whether or not our famers grow enough maize and veggies.

She’s teamed up with the University of Cape Town’s Centre of Criminology for this remarkable investigation, with funding from the Open Society Foundation and the Embassy of Finland. The story is about poverty, income disparity, malnutrition and obesity, the geography of the city, nutritional literacy, fast food advertising, agriculture and land reform policy, climate change, HIV/AIDS, service delivery and so much more. Without a well healthy, nourished populace, the economy and country can’t thrive, it’s that simple.

Otherwise
Meanwhile Leone’s journalism specialises in climate change, energy issues, biodiversity, agriculture and food security. Like most freelancers, her work’s been published all over the place, including in the Sunday Independent, Mail & Guardian, Sunday Argus, Sunday Tribune, African Decisions, Africa Geographic, Getaway, Progress, Business Day’s EarthYear, Farmers Weekly, Engineering News, Cape Times, SA4×4, Xplore and the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, amongst others.

Once, in another life, she wrote about wine and even contributed to the John Platter Wine Guide in 2007. And in 2005 she co-authored the new Environmental Management Plan (EMP) for the Prince Edward Islands Special Nature Reserve.
Leonie has a Bachelor of Journalism & Media Studies from Rhodes University and a Masters in Journalism from Stellenbosch University.

When she’s not at her desk
Like many of the people from the Eastern Cape, Leonie’s an economic migrant into Cape Town. But after nearly 12 years, feels like she’s earned her citizenship to the mother city. Her relationship with the South Easter and the scruffy-looking fynbos was acrimonious at first, after years of the misty grasslands and Tolkienesque forests of Hogsback where her family has lived for three decades. But writing about how this extraordinary landscape came to be eventually softened the harder edges of it for her. Now, she can’t imagine living anywhere else.

Leonie burns off nervous energy pounding her way up the peninsula’s beautiful mountains, although the views never allow one to forget the disparities in this historic and diverse cityscape.