Jacques Pauw is a South African investigative journalist who is an executive producer of the Special Assignment

SABC Special Assignment

Special Assignment is an investigative current affairs programme on SABC. Since August 1998 the programme has covered news events in South Africa and beyond, often disclosing criminal activities and atrocities unknown to the public.-External links:**...

 current affairs programme on SABC. Pauw was a founder member and assistant editor of the anti-apartheid Afrikaans newspaper Vrye Weekblad

Vrye Weekblad

Vrye Weekblad was a groundbreaking progressive, anti-apartheid Afrikaans national weekly newspaper that was launched in November 1988 and forced to close in February 1994. The paper was driven into bankruptcy by the legal costs of defending its charge that South African police general Lothar...

. He began his television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 career in 1994, specializing in documentaries around the Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

n continent.

Throughout his journalistic career, Pauw has investigated lethal criminal activities in the underworld of southern Africa and exposed atrocities committed by governments around the African continent. Affairs covered by Pauw's documentaries include the Rwandan Genocide

Rwandan Genocide

The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people in the small East African nation of Rwanda. Over the course of approximately 100 days through mid-July, over 500,000 people were killed, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate...

, the War in Dafur and the police death squads in South Africa under apartheid.

Books

Pauw has written several books, among them, "Into the Heart of Darkness: The Story of Apartheid's Killers," published in 1997 and "Dances with Devils: A Journalist's Search for Truth," published in 2007.

Recognition and honors

Pauw's work has been shown around the world and he has received several national and international awards, including the Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting, the Media Institute of Southern Africa

The Media Institute of Southern Africa

Media Institute of Southern Africa is a non-governmental organisation with members in 11 of the Southern Africa Development Community countries...

's award for investigative journalism and the Young African Leadership Award.

Twice Pauw has been named as CNN

CNN

Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...

's African Journalist of the Year and he has also been acknowledged the Vodacom

Vodacom

Vodacom is a pan-African mobile telecommunications company, and was the 1st cellular network in South Africa. It provides GSM service to more than 35 million customers in South Africa, Tanzania, Lesotho, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Revenue for the year ended 31 March 2008...

 Journalist of the Year Award in South Africa. In 2007 he won the Nat Nakasa Award for Media Integrity.