Viewfinder

Founded in 2019, Viewfinder is a non-profit organisation working to foster the development of accountability journalism in South Africa. It specifically focuses on long-term, in-depth investigations that reveal broad, systemic failures, disproportionately impacting vulnerable and marginalised communities. Viewfinder also uses documentary filmmaking and inter-newsroom collaborations to make its findings accessible to a range of South African news consumers. The organisation’s initial focus was on police brutality and the failure of independent police oversight in South Africa. Viewfinder obtained records of nearly 50,000 registered complaints and packaged them into a public interface called the Police Accountability Tracker. More recently, Viewfinder has exposed how the government has contributed to the decline of literacy in South Africa, through its failure to properly develop and implement a much-touted National Reading Plan. Viewfinder also hosts Accountability Reporting Fellows to help emerging investigative journalists learn the methodology behind in-depth, public-interest reporting.