Durban’s media fraternity, shocked by the death of veteran print media and TV journalist Ami Nanackchand, who died of a heart attack aged 80 last Friday, have paid glowing tributes to one of the few practitioners who had successfully made a transition from advertising to the world of newspapers and broadcasting.
As a rookie journalist at Post Natal in 1970s straight from the hotbed of resistance politics at Merebank High School, I met and befriended the former St Anthony’s School teacher. Daily this towering colleague would trudge the streets of the Durban and Grey Street CBDs, formally dressed and a suitcase in his hand, as he knocked on the doors of furniture stores, used car sales lots and the retail business to secure adverts for a tabloid newspaper that served the city’s Indian and coloured communities.
Working under manager Fred Brewis, he had always interacted closely with the newsroom and editorial crew under Editor Colin Vineall and chief sub-editor Malcolm Dunkeld – unknown then he had a passion for journalism. His sister Sudha Garbharran was the newsroom secretary to Editor Garry Brennan.
As the eldest son of the first Hindu woman priest, Pundita Prabhawathi Nanackchand, a respected resident of Sobrun Road, Overport, he spoke and write glowingly about his mother’s spiritual engagement with President Nelson Mandela in Durban, and how she would have liked to attend the delegation of spiritual leaders to the banned ANC in Lusaka, Zambia in the late 1980s.
The passing away of the retired Durban North media man followed that of a prominent child specialist, Dr TS (Teddy) Pillay, who died aged 80 earlier this month – a graduate of the University of Cape Town: Medical colleagues and friends described the charming, smiling doctor-socialite as a “gifted paediatrician, excellent medical academic, true scholar and gentleman and a connoisseur of the arts” who together with is wife had graced many social events – including the Nadaraja Awards.
About 150 mourners – among them the former editor of Daily News, Post and Sunday Tribune, Dennis Pather, 80, author of Copyboy, a 50-year memoir of the struggles and challenges faced by black journalists during the dark days of apartheid, who worked with Nanackchand in the newsroom at Natal Newspapers at 85 Field Street Durban: “There was a long queue of mourners who came to pay their last respects to Ami Nanackchand, a testament of how well loved and respected he was. He could be trusted personally and professionally. He was a thoughtful and ethical journalist.”
From newspapers, Nanackchand switched channels to the SABC as TV presenter of political news from President PW Botha’s discredited tricameral system, the House of Delegates. However, in the 1990s he made good on his professional career and demeanour and worked his way into the mainstream of the state-owned TV at editorial level, covering the democratic era, and mentored dozens of newcomers, among them Mapi Mahlangu: “His expertise as a wordsmith and experienced news editor helped me to craft powerful and compelling stories … guidance laid the foundation for me becoming the editor-in-chief of a prominent 24-hour news channel. He has left an impactful legacy.”
Prominent attorney Ebie Moolla posted his tribute on Facebook: “Ami was not just a journalist … a social commentator, voice of reason and a beacon of truth … his knowledge of national and world politics was unparalleled”.
“Ami was a trailblazer in the transformation of journalism from apartheid to democracy … acknowledged doyen of the media industry, and mentored and inspired many people who have achieved success in their careers,” said film-maker Anant Singh, famously credited for Mandela’s biopic, Long Walk To Freedom, and Alan Paton’s epic novel, Cry, the Beloved Country.
Footnote: Ami Nanackchand’s intellectually inspiring knowledge, discourses and dissents of politics and national issues endeared me to him. An easy-going, calm and collective colleague, a wordsmith of note, best remembered for his quiet commitment to the upliftment of black journalists who found themselves on their back foot in white-dominated newsrooms, and a changing country. With news swirling around the ANC Speaker of Parliament, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, who as Minister of Defence and Military Veterans, is accused of allegedly receiving millions of rands in cash bribes from a contractor, it stirred back unspoken memories of our years at the militant labour union, Media Workers Association of South Africa (Mwasa). This comrade-colleague joined me on a flight and road mission to a national council meeting during the repressive, watershed apartheid era when we secretly ferried the minister’s then house-arrested husband, Charles Nqakula, later ANC minister and diplomat, from his safe house in King William’s Town to Cape Town and back – then quite a serious and punishable offence. Our condolences to his teacher-wife, Krish (nee Pillay), and siblings, Arthi, Ishara, Vedant and the late Sudha.
