Charlene Leonora Smith Biography

Charlene Leonora Smith is a journalist, published author of 14 books, and a communications and marketing consultant who lives and works in the United States.

She began her career at the Johannesberg Star, and specialized in anti-apartheid resistance politics. She later reported on South African politics for Sunday Tribune (where she was also deputy bureau chief), Business Day (where she was also deputy news editor), Financial Mail (where she was associate editor) and Finance Week (where she was assistant editor). Smith has worked as a producer for ABC's Nightline (US) with Ted Koppel and for CBS 60 Minutes. She has helped produce television documentaries for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for many years, including two award winning documentaries on Nelson Mandela. A documentary on AIDS for the United Nations won the Prix Italia in 2006.

She had a long career as a feature writer for the Los Angeles Times. She has written for Washington Post, The Observer, Guardian, Le Monde, Brain World, Microbicide Quarterly, Boston Globe" and other publications. She has lived and worked in Japan, Argentina, South Africa, and the United States where she reported on the White House, and where she has lived for many years.

In 1999, she was raped and stabbed in her home and a week later published her account of the event and her quest to obtain anti-viral drugs. Smith also feared that the rapist may have HIV/AIDs. Smith began campaigning for rape survivors, as she called them, rejecting the term victim, to receive post exposure prophylaxis after rape. In 2000 she was invited by the Centers of Disease Control to address scientists, as a result of which CDC embarked on its protocol for PEP for survivors of sexual assault with her assistance. It was first published in 2004.

In 2004, Smith published an article about the prevalence of rape in South Africa, earning criticism from President Thabo Mbeki, a former ally, and touching off a confrontation in Parliament in which "legislators accused Mr. Mbeki of dodging the issues of sexual violence and AIDS, and the president accused them of pretending that racism died with apartheid." Mbeki's criticisms of her first began in December, 1999 when he objected to her reporting about rape and HIV in an address to parliament.

Smith is considered an expert on sexual violence, post traumatic stress syndrome, and HIV. She has been invited to present papers and chair sessions at many conferences and seminars globally, including the World AIDS Conferences. She has twice been an invited guest of the Swedish government and once of the Australian government.

A communications and marketing consultant with considerable expertise in digital media she has consulted to the World Economic Forum, the Summit on Sustainable Development, Fifa-2010 World Cup, Ogilvy PR, South African Airways, Healthbridge, AstroTech Training, Eskom, Marsha Coleman-Adebayo and her No Fear Coalition, and others. She has lectured at numerous colleges and universities including the University of the Witwatersrand Graduate School of Journalism; the Antioch Institute at the University of Georgia, Athens; Boston College, Goddard College in Vermont, etc.

She lives and works in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

AWARDS

• Woman of the Year: Media and Communications, SABC/Shoprite Checkers 1999
• Ruth First Courageous Journalism Award, Rhodes University 2000
• Person of the Year, Mail and Guardian newspaper 2000
• One of the 10 most Influential South Africans of the Year (ranked fifth), Independent Group of Newspapers 1999
• Pretoria Technikon Communicator of the Year 2001
• Features writer, CNN Journalist of the Year 2000
• Woman of the Year, Jong Dames Dinamiek 2002
• Mondi award, Best Feature writer: Health 2003
• Distinguished work media and human rights, SAWA, Toronto, Canada 2005
• Co-recipient Prix Italia, best television documentary " AIDS in South Africa for Synergy Films and United Nations 2006

Books

• (Text by Charlene Smith)
• (Nominated for the Alan Paton Award, and voted one of the top 10 books of the year by The Star newspaper and Sunday Times. Launched in Sweden as Utan Skuld by Leopard Press in September, 2003).

Chapters in books

• 1992: Patterns of Violence, edited A Minnaar, HSRC, chapter conflict in Natal.
• 1995: Robben Island, edited Jurgen Schadeberg, chapter on escapes.
• 2004: How South Africans Looked the Beast in the Eye: HIV in SA edited by head of SA HIV Clinicians Society, Dr Des Martin, Jonathan Ball
• 2004: The Closest of Strangers: South African Women's Life Writing edited by Judith Lutge Coullie, Wits University Press
• 2005: Media in South Africa by William Mervin Gumede, Kwa Zulu Natal University Press (chapter on broadcasting)
• 2006: Articulations: A Harold Wolpe Memorial Lecture Collection, Africa World Press and University of KwaZulu Natal Press. 2006: 1956: The Woman's March edited and published by Mothobi Mutloatse.
• 2009: AIDS published by Leopard Forlag, Sweden.