Why GroundUp? : journalism new

When explaining the reason why GroundUp was started I like to tell this story. Sibongile Mazeka was a five-year-old child dying of AIDS because the family who looked after her could not afford antiretroviral treatment. These medicines were not yet available in the public health system as they are today. The Cape Times ran a moving story about Sibongile which showed the tragedy of untreated HIV infection. A couple of weeks after the story was published, I was in the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) office in Khayelitsha, and alerted to the sad news that Sibongile had died. I phoned the reporter who covered the story, one of the country's better health journalists at the time, and asked her to run a follow-up story on Sibongile the next day. "Sorry, there's no chance it'll make the paper tomorrow," I imperfectly recall her saying, "a plane has just flown into the World Trade Centre in New York."