Nat Nakasa
| Nat Nakasa | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Nathaniel Ndazana Nakasa 12 May 1937 Durban, Natal, South Africa |
| Died | 14 July 1965 (aged 28) Harlem, New York, USA |
| Cause of death | Suicide |
| Resting place | Chesterville, KwaZulu-Natal |
| Nationality | South African |
| Education | Nieman Fellow |
| Alma mater | Harvard University |
| Occupation | Journalist and editor |
| Employer | Drum, Rand Daily Mail |
| Known for | Drum, Rand Daily Mail, The Classic |
| Home town | Johannesburg, South Africa |
| Parent(s) | Chamberlain Nakasa Alvina Nakasa |
Nathaniel Ndazana Nakasa (12 May 1937 – 14 July 1965) better known as Nat Nakasa was a South African journalist and short story writer.
Nat Nakasa was born in outside Durban on 12 May 1937 to mother Alvina who was a teacher while his father Chamberlain was a typesetter and writer. He would be one of five children. He attended the mission school at the Zulu Lutheran High School in Eshowe completing his junior certificate.
After leaving school, aged seventeen he returned to Durban and after many jobs, two friends helped him find a job a year later as a junior reporter at the Ilanga Lase Natal, a Zulu language weekly. After his reporting attracted the attention of Sylvester Stein of the Drum magazine, he joined the magazine in 1957. He and the other journalists writings at the Drum were influenced by the Suppression of Communism Act, 1950 and had to show the effects of Apartheid indirectly on black lives without condemning it directly for fear of being banned from practising journalism.
With the Sharpville Massacre of 1960, the world took an interest in South Africa and so in 1961, he was asked to write an article entitled The Human Meaning of Apartheid for The New York Times.Drum struggled to keep its black writers due to the severe restriction they found themselves in and many went into exile in Europe of America. In 1963, he announced the formation of a quarterly literary magazine called The Classic, a magazine in English for African intellectual writers and poets from any race around Africa. The first years printing would be funded by Professor John Thompson of the Farfield Foundation, that unknown to Nakasa was funded by the CIA in order to cultivate a pro-American intellectual elite around the world. It first published in June 1963 and would feature writers such as Can Themba, Ezekiel Mphahlele, and Casey Motsisi.Doris Lessing and Leopold Senghor would feature in other issues and would later be edited by writer Barney Simon. In 1963, the Publications and Entertainment Act was passed which allowed the South African government broad powers to ban or censor content it deemed unfavourable to the interest of the country, further hindering Nakasa's work as he attempted to stay within the law.
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