Conversation with Debora Patta

As part of his monthly conversations with interesting people, a benefit for his subscribers, Mike van Graan will host a conversation with veteran journalist, Debora Patta, in Artscape's Resource Centre at 19.00 on Monday 19 October.

Patta is an international journalist with three decades of experience reporting from conflict zones around the globe and leading major news operations in Africa. She came to prominence in South Africa with her hard-hitting programme, 3rd Degree in the early days of e-tv. Her career spans senior editorial leadership, investigative broadcasting and frontline reporting on war, political upheaval and humanitarian crises.

Patta has worked for Channel 4 UK, BBC and most recently as a senior foreign correspondent for the US-based CBS News reporting across Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Asia. She has reported on numerous global events in the last two decades including the Ebola crisis, Nelson Mandela's death, the war in Syria, the Oscar Pistorius trial, Boko Haram in Nigeria, ISIS attacks in Europe, child slave labour in the DRC, famine in South Sudan, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Israel's war on Gaza.

Patta has won numerous awards for her work including an Emmy, a New York's Press Club Award and several National Association of Black Journalists Excellence Awards. Mike and Debora worked together in a student organisation and 'protest theatre' in the eighties; the conversation will mostly be about Patta's subsequent path as a journalist.

The entrance to Artscape's Resource Centre is off Artscape's staff parking, opposite Stage Door.