The Mail & Guardian has again proved its worth as South Africa’s top newspaper by scooping all the nominations in the investigative journalism category of the Mondi Newspaper Awards 2003. The nominations were announced on Tuesday.
The M&G‘s Wisani wa ka Ngobeni has received two nominations: one for a piece titled ”Is Mabona the Dirtiest Politician in South Africa?” — an investigation of corruption allegations against Mpumalanga provincial minister Steve Mabona, co-written with Matsuma Letsoalo — and another for ”Shadow falls on Lekota”, which examined Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota’s business interests.
Stefaans Brümmer and Sam Sole, also of the M&G, complete the nominations in this category for a series of articles on South Africa’s oil-purchase scandal.
Brümmer, who is the M&G‘s investigations editor, said: ”Of course we would have welcomed more competition in this branch of journalism, but the recognition of the fact that the M&G is ahead of its field is appreciated. Let this be a challenge to our competitors next year.”
Cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro, better known as Zapiro, earned a nomination in the graphical journalism category. Zapiro’s cartoons appear weekly in the M&G and daily on the M&G Online.
The yearly Mondi Awards acknowledge South African journalists ”who excel in their profession and who exhibit unsurpassed distinction in the various disciplines of newspaper journalism”, according to the nominations announcement.
The award categories are news writing, feature writing, investigative journalism, creative and opinionated journalism, graphical journalism, photographic and presentation.
Professor Guy Berger, head of the department of media studies and journalism at Rhodes University and convener of the Mondi judging panel, said: ”This competition is becoming recognised as the prestigious place to seek citation.”
Berger said a large number of entries had been received — including contributions from community newspapers — but he added: ”Quite a number of this year’s entries still have a way to go in order for their quality to match the increase in quantity.”
Other nominees include Estelle Ellis and Jeremy Gordin of The Star and Clinton van der Berg of the Sunday Times for news writing; Fred Khumalo of ThisDay and Lizel Steenkamp of Beeld for feature writing; and Debbie Yazbek of The Star and Rian Horn of ThisDay for photographic.