Chantel is a writer, media professional and yoga teacher who has worked on projects ranging from music to film-making, health and wellness and community upliftment since the early 2000s. She is a co-founder of the multi-disciplinary arts platform, COLOUR: Spirit of the Flats, which presented art and performance showcases at venues on the Cape Flats of Cape Town; as well as the independent record label DALA FLAT.
After 26 years in news media, in 2025 she launched Chantel’s Yoga Dojo in Athlone, where her focus is on using yoga as a vehicle for holistic personal and artistic development. Among these offerings are yoga and writing workshops which she facilitates alongside poet and creative writing teacher Toni Giselle Stuart.
She has a Master in Philosophy degree from Stellenbosch University where her thesis examined how the arts are reported on in local community media. As a current PhD candidate, her research focus is on how communities are using WhatsApp as a platform to curate, produce and share their own stories. She also lectures in the university’s journalism Honours programme.
Apart from reporting for traditional news media, Chantel has had poetry and non-fiction work published in #Journalism/Joernalistiek4.0, Survivor: The make of a woman, Text Bites: South African poems, plays, stories and non-fiction, Look at me: Women artists and poets advocate children’s rights, and Women Flashing: A collection of Flash Fiction.
She is the editor of Education for Liberation, a coffee table book commemorating the 100th anniversary of Livingstone High School which, when it was established in 1926, was one of only two high schools in Cape Town open to black learners.