Awards

The competition, which was launched by the then Mondi Paper South Africa and the Newspaper Association of South Africa in 2001, aims to acknowledge the journalists, photographers and layout artists who capture the stories of our times though powerful prose and pictures.

The awards honour and encourage excellence in a wide range of categories, from investigative journalism and breaking news, to feature writing, graphical journalism, and presentation.

First known as the Mondi Paper Newspaper Awards, the competition was enthusiastically received by the country’s newsmen and women right from the start.

In 2004, the competition’s name was changed to the Mondi Shanduka Newspaper Awards, following the merger of core sponsor Mondi Newsprint with Shanduka Resources, the first major empowerment transaction in the newsprint sector.

Along with this change came the addition of two new categories to the competition – the Lifetime Achiever of the Year Award, which seeks to honour individuals who have made a significant contribution towards furthering the interests of newspaper journalism in South Africa over a career of at least 20 years – and the South African Story of the Year, which is selected from the wide range of entries received across all categories.

Nathaniel Ndazana Nakasa (b. 1937 d. 1965) better known as Nat Nakasa was a South African short story writer and journalist.

He was born in Durban but moved to Johannesburg to work as a journalist for Drum magazine. He also worked for the Golden City Post and was the first black journalist to work at the Rand Daily Mail where he provided a black perspective for the newspaper’s predominantly white readership. 

In the Sixties, freedom of the press was an anathema in South Africa. Angry black voices were heard in the townships and in shebeens... but never in print. Government-controlled white newspapers freely regurgitated propaganda on a daily basis. Today, the written word has a platform without restriction - and to celebrate media integrity in South Africa, the Nat Nakasa Award is awarded on an annual basis by the Print Media SA, the SA National Editors' Forum and the Nieman Society.

If he were alive today in the new South Africa, perhaps he would have been a diplomat or politician, perhaps a prominent editor, a major publisher?

The annual Sanlam Awards for Community Press is aimed at encouraging excellence and rewarding meritorious work.

The competition is run by the Forum of Community Journalists (FCJ), under the auspices of the Print Media of South Africa (PMSA).

Full-time editors, journalists and photographers from all South African and Namibian community newspapers, which are not published more than twice a week, qualify for the awards.

Sanlam took over the sponsorship of the community press (at the time, also referred to as country newspapers) from the KWV in 1991.

The competition covers the 12 months ending on May 31 of the current year, i.e. June 1 of previous year to May 31 of current year.

Print Media SA and its constituent bodies are voluntary institutions whose success is dependent on the contribution of individuals within the print media industry who devote much of their time and energy to corporate concerns of our association, as well as individuals from the marketing communications/advertising industries, who play a major role in the continued development and furthering the interest of the print media in South Africa.

Many have made major contributions in the past and have brought us to where we are today. Time and history do not allow us to recognise all contributions those among us who have put in more recent efforts.