The 2012 Taco Kuiper Award for Investigative Journalism was announced on Friday, 5th April 2013. Senior reporter Msindisi Fengu and photographer Yandisa Monakalispent two months visiting more than 70 state-run school hostels.
A story which exposed horrifying conditions in the Eastern Cape’s rural school hostels has won the 7th Taco Kuiper Award – and R200 000 in prize money – for outstanding investigative journalism by South African media.
At the awards ceremony Friday, 5 April 2013 in Johannesburg, the convenor of the judging panel, Caxton Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Wits University, Anton Harber, described the winning entry from Msindisi Fengu of the Daily Dispatch as follows:
“East London’s newspaper has identified a way of taking one small item – in this case a remark by an MEC that prisons were ‘far better’ than the Eastern Cape’s rural school hostels – and turning it into a major investigation. Msindisi set out to visit 70 school hostels. Forty of them turned out be ghost hostels, and did not even exist, and those he saw over two months allowed him to document horrifying conditions.
This was not a story that arrived in an envelope or was the result of a lucky leak. It required many weeks on the road, visiting each school across the length and breadth of the Eastern Cape to document the appalling conditions in which students had to live. Msindisi’s persistence, determination and rigour together led to a most important story, powerfully told. And powerfully illustrated by photographer Yandisa Monakali. As a result, at least one official was suspended and the provincial authorities were booted into action.” - TACO KUIPER -
Read the article "Hostels of shame" by clicking the link below:
Dispatch wins Taco Kuiper
by SHANAAZ PRINCE
THE Daily Dispatch has scooped yet another award.
The 7th Taco Kuiper Award for outstanding investigative journalism by South African media went to Daily Dispatch reporter Msindisi Fengu and former Daily Dispatch photographer, Yandisa Monakali yesterday. They were honoured for their reports on the Eastern Cape’s rural school hostels in their investigation Hostels of Shame.
Daily Dispatch editor Brendan Boyle commended their work.
“The Dispatch is immensely proud of the work Msindisi and Yandisa did to expose the shameful conditions in our Eastern Cape hostels, and we are thrilled at this recognition of the importance of their investigation. They have continued a tradition of probing reporting by this newspaper,” he said. —