Gwen Lister (born 5 December 1953 in East London, South Africa) is a Namibian journalist, publisher, anti-apartheid and press freedom activist.
As political editor, Lister wanted to give SWAPO, Namibia's liberation movement, "a 'human face', showing the people, including whites, that they were not the 'terrorists' and 'communists' and the 'black threat' that the colonial regime made them out to be through their blanket propaganda.
In December 1984, Lister exposed a document authorising the interception of her mail by South African authorities, causing her to be arrested and detained for a week under the Official Secrets Act.
Her reporting on human rights abuses by South African forces brought new anger from the government and an advertising boycott by the white business community.
[5] In 1991, a mercenary for the Civil Cooperation Bureau — a South African government hit squad—who had been arrested for the murder of SWAPO activist Anton Lubowski stated that he had also been sent to Namibia to poison Lister.
[1][2] In the same year, she was detained for several days without charge after publishing a government document proposing new police powers in Namibia; she was four months pregnant at the time.
[2] The same year, Lister co-chaired the UNESCO conference on Free, Independent and Pluralistic African Media, which had the Windhoek Declaration as one of its results.
A fateful bus ride in Cape Town ... set Gwen Lister on her path when as a 13-year-old she witnessed the humiliation of an elderly Black woman and was morally outraged