From rags to riches

Iréne-Mari van der WaltBefore Otis Daniels was a news editor at Namibia Media Holdings’ (NMH’s) community newspaper, Erongo 24/7, he spent a number of years homeless on the streets of Johannesburg, South Africa. Daniels’s journey starts on a tragic note after he wrote a poem about being violently attacked by police officers in the City of Gold. Some good came of that situation when the poem was published in Homeless Talk, a newspaper written by homeless people on the streets of Johannesburg. He recalls being noticed by a man named Clive Emdon, the current chairman of the media committee of the Freedom of Expression Institute. Emdon enrolled Daniels into various short writing and editing courses, after which he worked closely with Homeless Talk, eventually spearheading the project. Daniels says he and the other homeless people attending the short courses saw their situation as an advantage. “We were based on the streets, so if someone got shot at a taxi rank, we were the first to know and we could get to the scene before anyone else. We knew the people as well, so if another journalist showed up on the scene, they would get hurt and robbed but everyone knew us,” he says. In his time on the streets of Johannesburg, Daniels turned to drugs as a form of escape. “There are people and cars and taxis on the street; it’s impossible to sleep on the streets of Johannesburg unless you’ve smoked. I knew it wasn’t good for me, but at least I was well rested the next day. I think I lied to myself by believing that I had to smoke to sleep,” he says. Eventually, the South African government moved the homeless people to a plot of land about 40 km out of the Johannesburg city centre, where they were normally based. This presented a problem to their community as they were dependent on the rubbish bins in the city centre for food. “Many of the older people would collect recycling materials and get money for it but they’d drink spirits and go to sleep and this is when the younger people would steal from them. I took pity on them and as a result, they cared for me. They ensured that I never had to search through a rubbish bin again,” says Daniels. After moving away from the city centre, many of the old people for whom Daniels had cared passed away. “I think I just got tired of the rush of the city,” says Daniels on his decision to return to Namibia. Here, he approached a local community newspaper in the harbour town of Walvis Bay, but due to the deterioration of his documentation on the street, Daniels was unable to prove his previous experience and qualifications. The owner of the newspaper employed Daniels in a low rank at his engineering company and one Saturday approached him asking him to produce an article on the Doc Savva volleyball tournament. “He gave me a camera, a notebook and a pen. I went to the tournament in my greasy overalls and put them in a plastic bag in the bin. I went to the bathroom to wash my face and my hands and went in to do the story,” he recalls. The following Monday, Daniels was hired at this newspaper and 13 years later was approached by Namibia Media Holdings, where he still works.

From rags to riches

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Republikein 2025-07-07

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From rags to riches

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