In spite of the obvious success of this year’s Highway Africa conference, the event was tinged with a mixture of pride and sadness that had very little to do with the conference itself.
In spite of the obvious success of this year’s Highway Africa conference, the event was tinged with a mixture of pride and sadness that had very little to do with the conference itself.
To understand what this means, our readers should know that in the main foyer of this year’s meeting, the organisers had taken the trouble to set up a special exhibition dedicated to the memory of Madikane Jelu.
Madikane, a well-known Grahamstown photojournalist, tragically passed away in April this year leaving behind a huge vacuum in the Grocott’s newsroom. We asked Madikane’s friend and Grocott’s Mail news editor, Luvuyo Mjekula, to address the Highway Africa delegates and to tell them about our loss.
In this way, journalists from all over the continent got to see a small portion of the work Madikane had produced for this newspaper, and they got to hear from a long time friend, how important he was in the scheme of things. We were sad, but proud that we had known and worked with Madiks.
The sadness continues because this week Luvuyo will also be leaving our newspaper, and he too will leave an enormous space that will be very hard to fill. However, the reason for Luvuyo’s departure fills us all with pride because he is going to take up a senior position in the Cape Times.
Just over a year ago, Luvuyo was promoted to the post of news editor, and since then has served this newspaper and our community with dedication, goodwill and amazing insight. His influence on the content of articles printed in this period cannot be over estimated. He chaired the daily diary meetings, guided reporters and students on how to approach their assignments; he took part in all the decisions that affected the front page and the editorials of this paper.
For these reasons and many more, we will be very sad to see Luvuyo leave Grocott’s Mail, but at the same time we are filled with pride that one of our own is about to make the big time.
