Shafiq Morton
SHAFIQ MORTON is a Cape Town-based photojournalist, editor, surfer, radio and TV presenter. He presents the popular Drivetime afternoon current affairs slot at Voice of the Cape radio station (www.vocfm.co.za).. On his show he has interviewed thousands of guests hailing from over 100 countries.
In a long career, now in its fourth decade, he was a pioneer of big wave surfing photography and has covered local South African stories such as the anti-apartheid campaign, the release of Nelson Mandela, the 1994 elections and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
He has been on assignment in places such as Palestine, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, Namibia and Niger.
In 2008 he won the National Vodacom Award in the community media section and the regional award in 2010. In 2014 his radio show was nominated for the MTN awards and in 2016 for the Liberty
Life Awards. From 2009-12 he was considered amongst the 500 most influential Muslims in the world by the Royal Islamic Institute in Jordan. In 2012 he received the AWQAF SA award for his
contribution to community media.
He is the author of four books, Notebooks from Makkah and Madinah (a Saudi Arabian travelogue), Surfing behind the Wall, My Palestinian Journey, Imtiaz Sooliman and the Gift of the Givers, A Mercy to All (winner of an AfriCAN Award) and From the Spice Islands to Cape Town: the Life and Times of Tuan
Guru.
He is currently writing a commissioned biography on the life of Shaykh Abu Bakr Effendi, an Ottoman scholar sent to the Cape in 1863.
The Chronicles of Ayman, the State Capture Sufi is his first novel, which is under publishing review..
Description
The book tells the story of how Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, a medical doctor, received a message from a Sufi teacher ‘to form a humanitarian organisation called the “Gift of the Givers”, and repeated the phrase “the best among people are those who benefit mankind”.’
Over 30 years later Gift of the Givers, Africa’s largest disaster relief and humanitarian agency, has a reputation for speedy responses to people in distress from climate disasters, pandemics and poverty. Sooliman has created a reputation for efficiency, speed of response, non-partisan assistance, absolute honesty and great empathy for people and their environments.
The book details earthquakes, wars, medical intervention, malnutrition interventions, hostage negotiations, devastating fires, water provision and help for animals in distress.
Sooliman lives by this advice: Live simply, spend altruistically, family first, neighbour first, then everyone else… seek out people, everyone who is in difficulty.
