Ryszard Kapuscinski
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Ryszard Kapuściński; March 4, 1932 – January 23, 2007) was a Polish reporter, journalist, traveller, photographer, poet and writer whose dispatches in book form brought him a global reputation. Widely considered a serious candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature during his lifetime, he is one of the Polish writers most frequently translated into foreign languages...
NationalityPolish
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth4 March 1932
CountryPoland
cold context interested people war
People were really interested in what was going on because of the international context of the Cold War.
war pages cold
The Cold War in Africa is one of the darkest, most disgraceful pages in contemporary history, and everybody ought to be ashamed.
war hypocrisy long
Amin is the shame of the whole world. The fact that he managed to rule so long and commit so many crimes was only possible thanks to the hypocrisy of the East and the West who were waging the Cold War for world domination.
war cynical way
The Cold War was waged in a particularly brutal and cynical way in Africa, and Africa seemed powerless to do anything to stop it.
war passion holocaust
In the First World War, there was the sudden passion of nationalism, and the killing took place because of these emotions. But the Soviet case is different, because you had systematic murder, like the Holocaust.
disposal exclusive fly four london president shopping time trips
At that time Uganda had four aircraft, one of which was at the exclusive disposal of Amin. It would fly to London on shopping trips for the president and his entourage. In Uganda there was nothing.
conditions gave rare send somebody
Conditions were so hard. To send the news out, telex was the only means, but telex was very rare in Africa. So if somebody was flying to Europe, we gave him correspondence to send after he arrived.
knowledge readership source
Readership was high, and very attentive. It was people's only source of knowledge about the world.
Be careful: they have arms, and no alternatives.
We have such a mixture now, such a fusion of different genres.
ask came journalism learned newspaper people
I started in journalism in 1950. I was 18, and the newspaper people came to ask me to work. I learned journalism through practice.
began involved technical
Underground literature only began in the '70s, when technical developments made it possible. Before that, we were involved in a game with the censors. That was our struggle.
both invite kept palace soviet time
Amin managed to invite both the US and Soviet ambassadors to his palace at the very same time and then deliberately kept them together in his waiting room.
hate patriotic differences
There is a fundamental difference between the Polish experience of the state and the Russian experience. In the Polish experience, the state was always a foreign power. So, to hate the state was a patriotic act.