Joe Thloloe, current director at the Press Council, is a well-respected South African journalist with over 50 years in the field. His began his life as a journalist in the early 1960s and has worked on a range of publications including The World, Rand Daily Mail, Golden City Post and Drum magazine, and is former deputy editor of the Sowetan. During the apartheid period he was harassed, detained and finally banned by the government – but refused to compromise his principles and ideals. Joe Thloloe has also been actively involved in the media industry through the range of organisations and associations he has led. He is a former chairperson of the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef), deputy chairman of the Southern African Editors’ Forum (SAEF) and president of the Union of Black Journalists and Media Workers Association of South Africa. Over the years, he has been honoured with a number of awards. In 1988, he was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and was presented with the Alan Kirkland Soga Lifetime Achiever at the eighth annual Mondi Shanduka Newspaper Awards in May 2009. In 2011, Rhodes University conferred an honorary Doctor of Laws degree on him. In 2012, he received the Order of Ikhamanga in silver, awarded for excellence in arts, culture, literature, music, journalism or sport. Joe has played a pivotal role, not only in acting against poor journalism as press ombudsman from 2007 to January 2013, but also in defending press freedom through arguing for independent selfregulation. ©