The Mail & Guardian cleaned up at South Africa’s first Science and Technology Journalism Awards presented in Pretoria last weekend. The newspaper walked off with the overall prize as well as winning both national newspaper categories.
The strength of the M&G’s science and technology coverage was demonstrated in the features category, where it provided not only the winner, but all three runners-up.
Elisabeth Lickindorf won the best feature in a national or regional newspaper with her article “How `Sherlock Holmes’ tracked down `Little Foot'”, which detailed the dramatic discovery of a 3,5-million-year- old skeleton by Dr Ron Clarke at Sterkfontein.
In the hard news category, the judges decided the entry from Mungo Soggot and David Shapshak was such a clear winner that they gave no runner-up. Soggot and Shapshak won for their expos of how Clarke was axed by Wits University despite his dramatic find; and a subsequent article about how pleas from eminent scientists around the world failed to save him.
The three runners-up in the features category were Ellen Bartlett for an article on how the barren Karoo is a fertile ground for palaeo-ontology; Ruben Mowszowski on the damage being done to the Namaqualand flowers by the hole in the ozone layer; and Michael Nurok for an article on how garlic is being used as an alternative to antibiotics for severely ill children.
Clarke himself won best feature in a specialist publication, for a scientific paper announcing his discovery of the Australopithecus skeleton published in the South African Journal of Science.
Michelle Alexander and Carol Albertyn were joint winners for the best television programme with their documentaries for M- Net’s Carte Blanche. Sharon Sorour-Morris, of Femina magazine, won the best contribution in a consumer publication, while respected palaeoanthropologist Professor Phillip Tobias was runner-up in this category with an article in Out There.
The awards were handed out by Deputy Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology Brigitte Mabandla.
M&G editor Phillip van Niekerk, who accepted the overall award, said: “We are dedicated to reporting science and technology because we see science as not simply a narrow, esoteric and academic area. Science journalism is intrinsically interesting because it is about knowledge, life and the universe – and ultimately it’s about developing South Africa.”
n Two M&G contributors have won prizes in the FNB Vita/English Academy Poetry in Translation Prize. Richard Jrgens won first prize in the competition, which is given to a poem translated into English from any of South Africa’s other official languages. The poem he translated was Brave New World, by Charl-Pierre Naude. M&G literary editor Shaun de Waal took third place in the contest with his translation of Johann de Lange’s poem, Labyrinth.