One decade down, many more to go

Pieter-Dirk Uys, long-time supporter and former columnist for the magazine, has donated his 6 May 2007 show at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town as a fundraiser. The May cover of the magazine will feature presidential hopeful, Evita Bezuidenhout.

The Big Issue, a non-profit job creation and social development project that publishes an independent general interest magazine sold by unemployed people in Cape Town, celebrated its 10th birthday in January 2007. This milestone was overshadowed by a number of crises besetting the project at the time. Yet it is rallying the troops - and looking for key personnel, including a new editor, MD and finance manager.

The Big Issue magazine was launched in South Africa in December 1996 as part of a job creation project modelled on a UK-based media concept of using a professional publication as a means to provide socially marginalised vendors with 'a hand up, not a hand out' as a means of earning a living.

Broken into three times

Ten years after it was launched, to the month, the offices were broken into three times over the holiday period, during which computers were stolen. The last break-in saw the computer storing the following month's magazine being stolen, as well as the back up computer. Staff and board members rushed back from holiday to produce the magazine, and ensure that vendors had a product to sell on return from their holidays.

Former MD Richard Ishmail, who resigned from the project in December 2006 to pursue his own interests, was murdered in his home in Woodstock on 10 January. To this day, there have been no arrests.

And then the dire financial situation of the project was revealed. Following its successful hosting of the Homeless World Cup on the Grand Parade in Cape Town last year, The Big Issue was left in a precarious financial position.

Trudy Vlok, acting MD (publishing) of The Big Issue, says, “Frankly, the future of The Big Issue was in serious jeopardy. While the Homeless World Cup was an international success, with 350 accredited journalists from all over the world attending the tournament and an estimated £2.5 million (R25 million) media coverage worldwide, financial support for the week-long tournament from South African government and business was disappointing.”

Cash flow crisis

The Big Issue partnered ProPoor Sport, the international owners of the event, as hosts of the Homeless World Cup. The task of staging the international tournament proved to be enormous, and fundraising for the event a full time job. The Big Issue itself became unable to fundraise concurrently for its own programmes, leaving the project with a major cash flow crisis.

“The Homeless World Cup was an opportunity for us to raise our voices on an international platform to highlight issues about homelessness and social marginalisation,” says Vlok.

“It generated enormous interest in Cape Town, South Africa and abroad, and we've been told that it provided a small but valuable tool for the organisers of 2010 to streamline their plans for the world's biggest soccer tournament.”

“Even President Mbeki highlighted it in his Heritage Day speech on the Grand Parade, the day the tournament opened. However, in the end, The Big Issue and our international partner, ProPoor Sport, also a non-profit organisation, were left to settle the bill,” Vlok adds.