In life and death, Nakasa a grave indictment of how SA treats its heroes

In December 2020, somebody — whether out of spite, frustration or sheer bloody-mindedness — took a hammer to Chesterville cemetery in Durban and smashed to pieces the tombstones of celebrated journalist Nat Nakasa. In 2014 his remains had been brought back from New York, where he died in July 1965, and reburied in Chesterville’s Heroes Acre.

Because of his fearless reporting and the manner in which he was harassed out of the country and subsequently died in exile, Nakasa occupies a special place in the pantheon of South African journalism. There was so much joy and celebration when his remains were repatriated. His grave was supposed to be something akin to a shrine. An annual award in courageous journalism is named after him. It is therefore difficult to understand the senseless violence visited on his grave. Even more perplexing is that the perpetrator didn’t seem to gain anything by such an act.

Nakasa’s talent had bloomed at a young age. He was only 20 when he came to Johannesburg from Durban to join Drum magazine in 1957. Legendary Drum journalist Can Themba, assigned by his editor to look after the new recruit, described his first meeting with Nakasa: “He came, I remember, in the morning with a suitcase and a tennis racket — ye gods, a tennis racket! We stared at him. He had a puckish, boyish face, and a name something like Nathaniel Nakasa. We soon made it Nat.”

Nakasa soon got the hang of the big city. By his own description he became something of a wanderer. Most times, he had no fixed abode. After work he’d sometimes sleep on a desk at the office or stay overnight when friends invited him for dinner. He detested the way apartheid put people in compartments. His rootlessness was his way of defying such restrictions. He simply wanted to be left alone to live his life the way he chose. His writing was fearless, engaging and entertaining with a delightful, often mischievous turn of phrase. Like all good reporters, he carried the scepticism of an inquiring mind. Grappling with his identity, he once asked: “Who are my people?”, a question that still seems to baffle us to this day.

“‘My people’ are South Africans,” he said. “Mine is the history of the Great Trek. Gandhi’s passive resistance in Johannesburg, the wars of Cetshwayo and the dawn raids which gave us the treason trials in 1956. All these are South African things. They are part of me.”

In no time Nakasa was writing not only for Drum, but a weekly column for the Rand Daily Mail — the first black opinion writer for a white newspaper — and had founded The Classic, a literary magazine. He was steeped in the cultural and intellectual milieu of Johannesburg. In 1964, at only 27, he was granted a Nieman Fellowship to Harvard University in the US. It was the high water mark of his young life.

But it was also the beginning of a series of events that would ultimately lead to his death by his own hand. Despite several pleas, the government refused to grant him a passport. He thus had no alternative but to take what he called “a grave step ”— getting an exit permit, which meant that once he left, he would not be allowed back into the country. “What this means,” he wrote “is that self-confessed Europeans are in a position to declare me, an African, a prohibited immigrant, bang on African soil. Nothing intrigues me more.”

Nakasa was so reluctant to leave on an exit permit that he was still calling friends on the eve of his departure for reassurance that he was not making a mistake. After his fellowship at Harvard, the prospect of not coming back home must have haunted him. Visiting South African friends in New York in July

1965, he plunged to his death from the seventh floor of an apartment building. It was, in a sense, the ultimate fulfilment of the exit permit — a journey of no return. He lay in an unmarked grave for almost 30 years until the Nieman Foundation arranged a plaque for it.

A South African journalist, Dana Snyman, visited the grave in 1993 and wrote a story that sparked a campaign to bring Nakasa home. That culminated in arts & culture minister Nathi Mthethwa accompanying the family to New York to repatriate his remains. The return kicked off a few days of festivities, culminating in a grand finale of speeches and lots of food at the Durban city hall, where journalists mingled with the who’s who of Kwa-Zulu-Natal. No government expense had been spared to make the thing a success and, obviously, to make the politicians look good. Everybody was happy.

Nat Nakasa had come back home, where he belonged. What’s more, he was reburied at Heroes Acre in Chesterville, the township where he was born and grew up. At last, we thought, Nakasa — and his family — will have peace and closure.

Now his grave has been reduced to rubble. The question is, by who and why? Where was the security? The grave was desecrated in December 2020, so why has it not been fixed? Or is there a bigger and more profound message being conveyed by such a senseless act? What has the country come to?

The guy was resting peacefully in a cemetery in New York, in the company of luminaries such as Malcolm X and James Baldwin. He had been hounded out of his motherland. He was literally killed by apartheid. After more than 50 years lying forgotten in an unmarked grave, we exhumed him because we said we wanted him to come home to the warm embrace of his people, only to violate and murder him again. The homecoming celebrations and the putrid speeches have all faded into nothingness. It is, I supposed, a comment on the times we live in.