Renowned anti-apartheid journalist Nat Nakasa.
The remains of renowned anti-apartheid journalist Nat Nakasa will be returned to South Africa, the Citizen reported on Monday.
Arts and Culture Minister Nathi Mthethwa reportedly told the newspaper the Supreme Court of New York granted the government permission a few weeks ago to exhume and repatriate Nakasa’s body. The reburial, he said, would take place at Heroes’ Acre in Chesterville, KwaZulu-Natal.
Nakasa, a prolific young black voice who exposed the devastation of apartheid in his writings, 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 Harvard University. Nakasa died after falling from a building in New York in an alleged suicide in 1965. He was 28.
He was buried at the city’s Ferncliff Cemetery. Mthethwa said his department had worked with the South African consulate in the United States for the return of the body. Family spokesperson Sipho Masondo told the New Age this would be a fulfilment of the family’s wishes.
“It would finally give us closure as a family. At the time of his death, Nakasa’s father wanted him to be buried in South Africa … ” – Sapa