The most notable consequence of this assignment was an hour-long documentary titled Africa's Killing Fields, ultimately broadcast nationwide in the United States by PBS.
In-between, Venter cumulatively spent several years reporting on events in the Middle East, fluctuating between Israel and a beleaguered Lebanon torn by factional Islamic/Christian violence.
From there he covered hostilities in Rhodesia, the Sudan, Angola, the South African Border War,[2] the Congo as well as Portuguese Guinea, which resulted in a book on that colonial struggle published by the Munger Africana Library of the California Institute of Technology.
More recently, Venter was active in Sierra Leone with South African mercenary pilot Neall Ellis flying combat in a Russian helicopter gunship.
By his own account, by virtue of his reporting he is persona non-grata in Angola, Ethiopia, Iran, Libya, Syria, the former Soviet bloc (including Afghanistan),Tanzania, Zimbabwe.
Venter also wrote Coloured - A Profile of Two Million South Africans (Human & Rosseau, Cape Town 1974) which served as an indictment of Pretoria's racial policies and was penned before it became fashionable to be anti-Apartheid.