Taco Kuiper Awards

The 6^th Taco Kuiper Award for Investigative Journalism

Winners

Mzilikazi wa Afrika, Rob Rose and Stephan Hofstatter

Sunday Times

Mac’s dodgy millions

 

The Taco Kuiper Award judges said: ”When one takes on a man like Mac Maharaj, one has to have a cast-iron case. That is not easy when it is a case which has stymied the Scorpions. The Sunday Times team spent months pursuing it, and found the smoking gun: a consultancy agreement that set out how money would flow from a company bidding for a major tender with Maharaj’s department to his wife. They had dates, amounts and bank account numbers - the detail that turns a good investigation into a great one. Maharaj could not take action against the paper, as he had done elsewhere. He tried bluster, but none of the facts of the story have been challenged. The thud one heard as one read the story was the sound of an important politician being nailed to the wall.

 

The winners will share the R200 000 prize

Runners-up

Michael Kimberley, Msindisi Fengu, Lindile Sifile and Mark Andrews

 

Daily Dispatch

 

Dead on Arrival and Exhuming the Truth

The judges said: “Many entries this year dealt with corruption, but this East London paper had a major story about newborns at Eastern Cape hospitals dying of infection and another in which they visited 17 mortuaries across the province to document despicable condition. It was rigorous and resourceful enterprise journalism on important social issues, powerfully written and presented. The hospital chief was fired and reforms implemented in the mortuaries.

“In our second Taco Kuiper Awards in 2007, a Daily Dispatch team won the prize for an exposé of hospital conditions; six years later, they are still pushing for changes and improvements. Our media is sometimes criticised for neglecting those other than the urban elite or being only interested in sensation and profit; here the newspaper showed itself to be a strong and concrete ally of local citizens in their fight for decent health and social services.”

 

The runners-up receive R100 000.

 

Taco Kuiper Award Judges:

 

• Judge Tom Cloete, of the Valley Trust and the Supreme Court of Appeal
• Pippa Green, distinguished journalist, author and academic
• Anton Harber, Caxton Professor of Journalism and Media Studies, head of Wits Journalism
• Charlayne Hunter-Gault, our international representative who has a long and distinguished career in journalism.
• Justice Malala, well-known writer, editor and publisher
• Margaret Renn, Taco Kuiper Chair in Investigative Journalism at Wits

 

Taco Kuiper

Taco Kuiper was a highly successful South African publisher who left a significant part of his estate to the promotion of investigative journalism.  He believed that exposing matters of public concern which those scrutinized would not want to see disclosed was an important enterprise. It was for this reason that Kuiper, shortly before his death in September 2004, set up a fund for investigative journalism within The Valley Trust. The Trust has partnered with the Wits Journalism Programme to administer the Taco Kuiper Award.

Read about past winners

Troublemakers: The Best of South Africa’s Investigative Journalism

Edited by Anton Harber and Margaret Renn

The 2009 Taco Kuiper Awards saw an unprecedented number of high-quality entries all vying for the top spot at this prestigious investigative journalism award. Troublemakers is a collection of the best of these entries.

This is the book that will keep Schabir Shaik up at night. And Carl Niehaus. And Barry Tannenbaum. And all South Africa’s other crooks, scoundrels and scumbags. The powerful may lament it, but those excited by a new and lively democracy love it: South Africa is enjoying an unexpected revival of hard-hitting investigative journalism

Contents include articles from:

Daily Dispatch ♦ Sunday Times ♦ Politicsweb ♦ Mail & Guardian ♦ The Star ♦ City Press ♦ Sunday Tribune ♦ Weekend Argus ♦ FinMedia 24 ♦ Financial Mail

DVD contents include programmes from Special Assignment and 3rd Degree.

Read about the Troublemaker's book launch.

Read a review of the book.