Alf Kumalo wins 2005 Nat Nakasa Award

Kumalo has over the decades shown integrity, fearlessness, resistance to censorship, courage and a commitment to serve South Africans by having his photos published despite obstacles, said Peter Sullivan, before handing the award to the winner at a SA National Editors' Forum (SANEF) dinner in Cape Town on Sunday night, July 10 2005.

Sullivan, Chairperson of Print Media South Africa's Media Freedom committee and a judge himself, said his fellow judges Amina Frense, Joe Latakgomo, Professor Govin Reddy and Professor Lizette Rabe found judging easy this year as their decision was both unanimous and had given them great pleasure.

Sullivan urged editors to keep entries coming each year, saying they showed South Africa had a deep pool of courageous journalists with integrity.

In his motivation for nominating Kumalo, The Star's creative director and Executive Editor, David Hazelhurst wrote: "One day in 1963, when I was editor of Drum magazine, he walked into my office carrying a picture. It showed a burly policeman delivering a vicious kick between the legs of reporter Harry Mashabela from behind. Such was the power of the kick you could see the shape of his boot exploding through the front of Mashabela' trousers.

It was the year of the jackboot of John Vorster, habeas corpus had disappeared, the 90-day-detention without trial Act had given policemen a license to kill and assault behind closed doors with impunity.

"The police hated journalists - and photographers in particular, for their pictures portrayed the truth about an evil system, and Kumalo, despite warnings, risked a severe beating to take the Mashabela picture.

"He had tried to sell it to several papers with no success." Sullivan said that Hazelhurst, to his credit, had splashed the picture across two pages under the headline: 'Alf Kumalo, photographer extraordinary'.

Born in Alexandra in 1930, Kumalo started earning a living doing various jobs in a garage. He loved drawing people as a hobby. It was during the 1950s that he started taking pictures as a profession.

At the start of his new career he reported and photographed a case in Evaton that had a lasting effect on his life. A black man was charged with theft and the defence lawyer was Nelson Mandela. It was the beginning of a friendship lasts today. On the day of the Rivonia sentence, Kumalo drove Mandela's mother to Pretoria and escorted her through an angry crowd of whites baying for the death sentence.

He was arrested several times for doing his job and still has a crack in his skull from an assault by five policemen in 1977.

Today, Kumalo has his own photographic school in Diepkloof.

Hazelhurst adds that on this 40th anniversary of Nat Nakasa's death, it would be fitting to link Nat's name to Alf's, as they worked together, were friends, and Alf has lived up to the finest traditions of integrity and courage.

Previous winners have been Buks Viljoen, Debbie Yazbek, Justin Arenstein, Mzilikazi wa Africa, Andre Jurgens, Jessica Bezuidenhout, Wolfram Zwecker Mathatha Tsedu, and Jon Qwelane.