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The Eugene Saldanha Memorial Fund Fellowship

It is one of the toughest reporting challenges for South Africa and no doubt the most important: understanding in its proper context the awful cleavage of poverty and inequality that cuts across the national landscape. Because the problem is so large and its impacts so broadly spread, our media, including the Mail & Guardian, struggle to focus on it.

This was understood by the late Eugene Saldanha, activist, civil society leader and policy adviser, whose life's work was fighting for social justice.

To commemorate that work and give expression to the insights that animated it, the M&G and Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) Southern Africa have created an annual fellowship in social justice reporting.

The Eugene Saldanha Memorial Fund Fellowship will enable a young journalist to spend a year working at the paper on poverty, inequality and the realisation of human and socio-economic rights.

The fund, which will finance the fellowship, is administered by CAF Southern Africa, which Saldanha founded. It is supported by individual donations and the generosity of international private foundations with which he was associated.

As CAF Southern Africa chief executive Colleen du Toit said: "Freedom of the press was, for Eugene, an absolute non-negotiable and within that independence he wanted to see increased exposure of persistent injustice, inequity and discrimination."

The M&G and CAF Southern Africa believe the fellowship will enable a reporter to do just that.

Eugene Saldanha: The man who saw too much

He lived his life for others. But, in the end, Eugene Saldanha left himself out of the final equation. Read more

Meet the reporters:

Manqoba Nxumalo

Manqoba Nxumalo is the Mail & Guardian's Eugene Saldanha Fellow for social justice reporting in 2013.

Nxumalo started his journalism career at the Swazi Observer, a government-controlled Mbabane-based newspaper, in 2004. The following year he moved to the kingdom's only independent newspaper, Times of Swaziland, where he reported on diverse issues for six years. During this time Manqoba completed a diploma in law at the University of Swaziland while doing court reporting for the newspaper.

This experience drove his passion to use journalism as a tool to change the injustices of the world and give a voice to those without one. His work put him at odds with authorities in Swaziland, and in 2011 Manqoba moved to South Africa to continue telling his stories. He has written for a range of local and international publications.

Heidi Swart

Heidi Swart has a background in social work and social research. She made a career change to journalism in 2010 when she was accepted for a cadetship at Independent Newspapers. This involved a year of in-house training with the Cape Argus and Independent's investigations unit, under the auspices of veteran investigator Ivor Powell.

Following this, she worked at the Cape Community Newspapers for six months, a branch of Independent Newspapers. She completed a six-month internship at the Mail & Guardian's centre for investigative journalism, amaBhungane. She is the Eugene Saldanha Fellow for social justice reporting in 2012.

Kwanele Sosibo

Kwanele Sosibo studied journalism at Durban's ML Sultan Technikon before working at Independent Newspapers from 2000 to 2003.

In 2005, he joined the Mail & Guardian's internship programme, and later worked as a reporter at the paper between 2006 and 2008 before working as a researcher. He was the inaugural Eugene Saldanha Fellow in 2011.