/ 13 September 2014

Hundreds attend Nat Nakasa memorial

Hundreds Attend Nat Nakasa Memorial

Hundreds of people arrived at Durban’s city hall for the memorial service of anti-apartheid journalist Nat Nakasa on Saturday.

Guests included Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, KwaZulu-Natal premier Senzo Mchunu, numerous well known local personalities and Nakasa’s family. Arts and Culture Minister Nathi Mthethwa was expected to give the key note address. 

The ceremony was preceded by a procession of his coffin through Chesterville in Durban, where Nakasa originally came from. Later on Saturday, Nakasa is expected to be buried in Chesterville’s Heroes Acre. Anti-apartheid journalist Nathaniel Nakasa’s remains arrived at Durban’s King Shaka International Airport last month. 

Nakasa worked for publications including Drum magazine, the Rand Daily Mail, and Illanga newspapers. He was forced to leave South Africa on an exit visa when the apartheid government refused to grant him a passport after he was awarded a Nieman Fellowship at the Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Nakasa died after falling from a building in New York in an apparent suicide in 1965. He was 28. He was buried at the city’s Ferncliff Cemetery. – Sapa