Bizcommunity freelancer wins at SADC awards

Da Silva is one of the four laureates who have been chosen as this year's winners by the SADC Regional Adjudication Committee (RAC) that met in Lilongwe, Malawi, from 24-28 May 2010.

Da Silva won the prize for a story about cross-border travel in the SADC region. The story was published in November 2009 in Change/Mudanca magazine, which along with Delivery (local government) and Mobility (transport), are some of the titles owned by Cape Town-based String Communications.

Competition categories

The competition's entries are from the categories of Print Journalism (articles published in newspapers, newsletters and website), Radio Journalism, TV Journalism and Photojournalism.

Two winners are from Mozambique - Boaventura Mandlate from state-run Radio Mozambique (RM) and Alfredo Mueche of the weekly paper Domingo (photojournalism category). The winner of each category receives a certificate signed by the SADC chairperson and prize money of US$2 000 (about R14 600).

The winners received their prizes during the SADC summit of heads of state and government held last week in Windhoek, Namibia.

Awarded in absentia

However, da Silva, who was unable to travel to Namibia, will receive his award 'as soon as possible', GCIS said, true to SADC's regulations stating that should winners being unable to attend the awarding ceremony, arrangements will be made to give the prize in their home countries.

"I would like to congratulate Mr da Silva for his winning entry and look forward to receiving more entries in all categories from the Republic of South Africa in the 2011 SADC Media Awards competition," Leefa Penehupifo Martin, of the SADC executive secretariat, said.

Pretoria-based GCIS is in charge of coordinating and marketing the awards to SA media. The SADC executive secretariat is in Gaborone, Botswana.

SA media called on to participate

"We are calling on SA media to massively participate in this project because it is important in terms of encouraging the youth to take up media as a profession, enhancing regional integration and also rewarding good journalism," Government spokesperson and GCIS boss Themba Maseko said at the launch of the 2010 competition in Johannesburg early this year.

SA's past winners of the competition include JP du Plessis (radio award category, 2009), Andre Smith (TV, 2006), Fazila Dahall (radio, 2006) and Shelly Knipe (2005) from ABC Ulwazi, a community radio station.