More praise heaped on Nat Nakasa

@SITHOLEEXPRESS

Nat Nakasa award recipient, Joe Thlole. Pic (SANEF)

Nat Nakasa was a brave, excellent and exciting South African writer. This is according to author and investigative journalist  who won the annual Nat Nakasa Award in 1999 and in 2001.

Speaking to SABC Digital News, Wa Afrika says: “Nakasa was not just a writer; he was just one of those brilliant journalists we ever had in this country. I think for me to win an award named after one of the greatest journalists to ever come out of South Africa, it is a great honour.”


 

Mzilikazi wa Afrika on Nat Nakasa Award (Click to listen)

 



Veteran journalist, Joe Thloloe who himself won the Nat Nakasa Award for courageous journalism in 2012 says the award is one of the ways in which journalism is keeping Nakasa’s legacy.

“We have an annual award that we give, the Nat Nakasa Award for courageous journalism. We award this to journalists who have in fact lived up to the standards that where set by Nat Nakasa,” says former chairman of the South African National Editors' Forum (SANEF).

Wa Afrika says the generation of Nakasa has set up the tone for investigative journalists to be brave.

The Nat Nakasa Award is made to individuals working in the broadcast, online or print media who show exceptional integrity and courage in their work.

Mzilikazi wa Afrika on investigative journalism. (Click to listen)


Nakasa, whose body was exhumed from the Ferncliff Cemetery in the US, will be reburied on September 13, at the Heroes' Acre in Chesterville north of Durban.

Nakasa's remains were repatriated to South Africa a month ago. He left South Africa on an exit permit during the apartheid regime to take up a Nieman Fellowship in Harvard.

In an apparent suicide 50 years ago, Nakasa jumped off the seventh floor of his apartment in New York City.

Nakasa was born in 1937 in Durban; he spent the major part of his adult life as a journalist in Johannesburg, a regular contributor to the Golden City Post, an assistant editor of Drum and later as the first black columnist on the Rand Daily Mail.

At the height of his career, in 1963, he founded a literary tell-it-like-it-is journal called The Classic.

Some of the previous winners are: Terry Bell, Mondli Makhanya and Greg Marinovich.

Click to listen to Terry Bell who also won The Nat Nakasa Award.



 This article first appeared on SABCNews. It was done by Sthembiso Sithole (@SITHOLEEXPRESS) on Twitter.