Benjamin Pogrund

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Benjamin Pogrund is a South African-born author currently living in Israel.

He began a career as a journalist in 1958, writing for the Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg, where he eventually became deputy-editor. The Rand Daily Mail was the only newspaper in South Africa at that time to report on events in black South Africa townships. In the course of his work he came to know the major players in the Apartied struggle and gained the respect and confidence of leaders such as Nelson Mandela^[1]. Pogrund's reporting of police conduct in the Sharpeville massacre in 1960 was considered a "breakthrough. He was chief author of a 1965 series on beating and torture of black inmates. During his career reporting on Apartheid in South Africa he was put on trial several times, put in prison once, had is passport revoked and was investigated as a threat to the state by security police"^[2].

When the Rand Daily Mail ceased publication in 1985, Pogrund left for London. There he was chief foreign sub-editor of The Independent, London. Pogrund immigrated to Israel in 1997 to found Yakar's Centre for Social Concern in Jerusalem. He currently lives in Jerusalem with his wife Anne, an artist.

Pogrund has also served as an editor of the WorldPaper in Boston and reported from South Africa in the London Sunday Times. He has authored books on Robert Sobukwe, Nelson Mandela and the South African press under apartheid.

He was a member of the Israeli delegation to the United Nations World Conference against Racism in Durban and a recipient of the 2005-06 Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award^[3]