I HAVE just finished reading two of your June editions … and I am moved to reflect on the exemplary role played by your newspaper in the years that led up to the historic vote on April.
The success of The Weekly Mail and, later, the Mail &Guardian through the 1980s and 1990s has been an inspiration to journalists everywhere.
While I pursued my own career in newspapers, radio and television in far-off Canada, I was almost resigned to the apparent obduracy of apartheid in South Africa.
But the Mail, at times like a small voice in the night, continued to dig and dig and dig, not with a grinding axe, but with the sheer power of objective intelligence.
For a decade now I have received daily the New York Times, The Toronto Globe and Mail, newspapers and magazines from Moscow, Mexico, Beijing _ all over the world _ but the Mail was the most valued of all of those.
Your alliance with the Guardian simply vaulted the paper to the first rank in the English-language world.
In addition to your main news stories over the years, death squad revelations, environmental articles, a list of by-lines that reflected the new South Africa before it was born, your sense of humour, your arts coverage, some spectacularly brave photography _ all of you, past and present, maintained a world-class excellence under the kind of pressure that few journalists in the free world experience.
So my reflections in this northern summer of 1994 include a heartfelt professional thank you to all of you at the Mail & Guardian.
May you continue what you have started since the election, sticking to your guns in the next decade too.
The next generation of South African journalists would do well to use the Weekly Mail & Guardian as a measure for their achievements. _ Robin Benger, senior investigative producer, CBC-TV, Toronto, Canada