Brkic is the founder and editor of The Daily Maverick.

He has edited magazines on business and politics, technology, and wildlife. He has also published fiction and non-fiction books, most of them in Serbian. Though he has never pretended to be a reporter, his wide knowledge of politics (especially in America), combined with his experiences in a disintegrating Yugoslavia, gives him an unusual outlook on events in South Africa.

Despite the vowel-poor surname, he tells anyone who asks that he hails from Hyde Park, Johannesburg, having spent most of his adult life in South Africa.

Recent columns:

Brendah works for a management consultancy during the day, you know, one of those companies that no-one really knows what they do. Before she defected and went uber-corporate she worked for UpperCase Media and the Mail & Guardian and now does her writing on a freelance basis. She has dreams of being the change Zimbabwe needs. And did we mention she is female? Black female?

Curtis Doebbler is an international human rights lawyer, writer, and human rights defender who makes use of everything at his disposal, including the internet, to pursue the goal of human rights for all in a just and equitable world. He holds law degrees from New York Law School, Radbound Universiteit, and the London School of Economics and Political Science. His opinions are published in eight books, more than two hundred academic and newspaper articles, and online. He represents the NGO Nord-Sud XXI at the UN in New York and Geneva, the NGO International-Lawyers.Org in Geneva, and practices international
law (Doebbler.org) before international human rights tribunals. He teaches at universities in the Middle East, Africa and Europe when he is not travelling. His books can be purchased online at cdpublishing.org, among other sites.

Hamilton Wende is a freelance author, journalist, producer and fixer based in Johannesburg. He has worked all over Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan for most of the major international networks including CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera and many others.  His latest novel House of War about a search for a lost city of Alexander the Great in northern Afghanistan is in its second printing with Penguin. The fixer in the novel is called 'Abdulov' and he was once in the KGB - a long time ago.

Vegter is a South African former technology journalist who took up carpentry and ran away to Kynsna after one too many incidents of crime in Johannesburg. But because he likes argument for the sake of it (the coherent, intelligent type; not the froth-at-the-mouth version found among political and religious fanatics) he still writes a number of regular columns.

He has found himself in trouble with environmentalists, recreational cyclists, white people, black people, and just about every other group you can think of because of his views. Luckily he doesn't care what anybody else thinks about him.

Rousseau is a voluntary exile from professional philosophy, where having to talk metaphysics eventually became unbearably irritating. He now spends his time trying to arrest the rapid decline in common sense exhibited by his species, both through teaching critical thinking and business ethics at the University of Cape Town, and through activities aimed at eliminating the influence of religious ideology in public policy.

When not being absurdly serious, he’s one of those left-wing sorts who enjoys red wine, and he is alleged to be able to cook a mean Bistecca Fiorentine.

Julie Reid is an academic and media analyst at the Department of Communication Science at the Unisa. She tweets about media issues regularly from @jbjreid and writes about the state of media freedom in South Africa on her blog. Julie is busy finishing off her PhD thesis, which deals with something very clever and philosophical. She sits on the executive committee of the South African Communications Association, has recently become a member of the Right2Know campaign, and is involved in various research projects. Julie is currently editing a nice little book about South African visual culture which should be released mid-2011.

Suspended tenuously between the crushing weight of everything she is expected to be, and the meanness of what she is, Khadija is inching herself out of a yawning chasm of mediocrity. Calling herself a writer would require she actually write something, so she cowers behind ‘language practitioner’ instead. She busies herself exploring why we speak the way we do, blabbering a copious amount of Porcine Latin across the interwebs, while thinking deeply in Gobbledygook.
Don't mind what her headscarf and brown skin tell you, she don’t need no liberation, and that’s not the Stockholm Syndrome talking. She's from South Africa, btw.

Kiflu Hassain was born in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, in the 1960s. He was trained as a lawyer in Addis Ababa University, and worked at different state enterprises and corporations as an attorney until he landed up in a concentration camp in October 2005 on a farcical charge of corruption. After being denied bail for a full year, he was released in October 2006.

On top of being threatened by another round of incarceration, he found the outside world itself to be one big concentration camp, since fear and suspicion had descended on the land due to the brutal crackdown in July and November 2005 that saw the massacre of more than 200 civilians in Addis Ababa alone. Hence, he decided to flee the country, seeking asylum in Uganda in January 2007.

Kiflu has written articles for the English Reporter and the defunct Addis Zena newspaper in Ethiopia; and the Daily Monitor, Uganda Record, and New Vision in Uganda, among other publications.

Ethiopia, despite being the seat of the African Union had never produced a regime that allows even the minimum space for dialogue that other people in Africa enjoy so naturally. Thus Kiflu feels that ending up in Uganda is a blessing in disguise, as it affords him the opportunity to write.

At the same time, being a refugee has exposed him to the hypocrisy of the international community. Thus, he defines the term refugee as follows:

R - rooted out
E - exiled
F - frightened
U - unwelcome
G - globally shunned
E - expendable to capricious politics
E - eternally endangered

Whether you welcome him or not, his voice will be heard through his eclectic writings.

Manqoba Nxumalo is a senior investigative reporter for the Times of Swaziland, the country's only independent group of newspapers. He is also an activist, with particular interest in issues of human rights and media freedom.

Shaka Sisulu is a reluctant-columnist, sometimes radio-talk-show host, occasional social activist and consistent member of the ANC. He is writing this from a secret location.

Simon Allison is a South African freelance journalist based in Hargeisa, Somaliland. He specialises in Middle Eastern and African politics, with degrees from the School of Oriental and African Studies and Rhodes University, and has also lived in Egypt, Turkey, and the UAE. When not pontificating on the state of media in Africa, he pontificates on Third World Goes Forth, the politics blog which he co-authors.

Sipho Hlongwane is a self-taught writer who, apart from the occasional freelancing stint, slogs away at a law degree. He also makes regular contributions to the Mail & Guardian’s Thought Leader site.
He has driven forklift trucks, hosted radio shows, waited tables, reviewed books and has won prizes in visual arts competitions. You know, the normal, growing-up stuff.
He is a proud Zulu, (the Tswana blood is never to be mentioned. Ever) who hails from the KwaZulu Natal Midlands. He enjoys rugby in all its laddish raucousness, intelligent satire and chooses to spend his free time with people who don’t take themselves too seriously.

Trevor Ncube is the proprietor of M&G Media, owner of the Mail & Guardian; he is also publisher of the Zimbabwean newspapers The Standard, The Zimbabwe Independent and NewsDay.

Walter Pike is the founder of PiKE | New Marketing, consulting in building brands in an always on, always connected world. He has a background in marketing, traditional advertising agencies and was head of faculty at Marketing & Advertising at the AAA School. He has been a citrus farmer, racehorse breeder and owner, a cricket and soccer coach.