By ANDREW TRENCH

This morning I was greeted with the sad news of the sudden death of our colleague, political reporter Msimelelo Njwabane. He collapsed last night and passed away. He was 28.

His death has left myself and his colleagues at the paper in deep shock. In the band of brothers and sisters that make up a newspaper’s team the sudden loss of a colleague hurts. When a colleague the calibre of Msimelelo falls it hurts even more.

Msimelelo was a young reporter but he made up for inexperience with his larger-than-life passion and commitment to his work. He worked hard to tell the complex story of politics in the Eastern Cape, a political viper’s nest where the reporters stand in the frontline.

Along with colleague Mayibongwe Maqhina, Msimelelo drove our coverage of the emergence of Cope nationally and in the Eastern Cape. Their coverage resulted in recent record sales for the newspaper.

Of course, such coverage opened the paper up to charges of bias. The ANC and its allies accused myself, our reporters and the paper of bias – sometimes with deeply personal attacks on us. Our explanation that we were simply doing our jobs fell on deaf ears.

But the story changed as every story does and recent months have seen us leading the way in reporting on the fractures in Cope itself and Msimelelo was there at the frontline again right until the end.  His earlier critics must be scratching their heads today seeing their comfortable assumptions about him dashed.

Msimelelo was a political reporter who got his hands dirty. He didn’t report off policy statements and press releases. He got right down into the heart of a story – often to the chagrin of his subjects.

Recently he reported on how Cope spokesman Phillip Dexter and other top brass had to flee a pub in East London in the face of a mob of party dissidents. When the party complained about his report and his sources, Msimelelo pointed out that he had no sources – he was there and witnessed the event first hand.

Cope accused him of being pro-ANC. The ANC accused him of being pro-Cope. In fact, every party thought he carried a brief for another. I leave it to you to decide what that said about him.

But those of us that knew him understood where his heart lay. The truth would surprise many of his critics. But that’s his secret which we will keep. His own convictions were known to us and never mattered because he was a journalist above all else.

Msimelelo joined the Dispatch in January 2009 from Beeld where he had been an investigative and political reporter since 2007 after a year spent at City Press also working the political beat. He was an Eastern Cape boy who grew up Stutterheim and matriculated at Stutterheim High School. It was unusual for someone of his background to work at an Afrikaaans paper  but Msimelelo was not a usual person  finding his way into mainstream reporting through work with the Environmental Justice Networking Forum and the NuFarmer and African Entrepeneur publication.

As every reporter does in their career, he made some mistakes.

He blundered in a major report on an Eastern Cape vehicle tender deal which led to a significant front page apology by the newspaper and he felt the pain of our internal disciplinary procedures because of it. But he did not make excuses for this mistake. He admitted his shortcomings, stood tall and took it on the chin, vowing to be a better reporter.  He earned my respect for that and the politicians he wrote about could have learned something from his integrity.

I write this knowing that his colleagues will never forget him and I hope that others will know of what he achieved and the impact he made in his short career. I offered for any of his colleagues to take the day off if they needed to. They have declined. We know why and we know what Msimelelo would think about that.

His colleagues have laid flowers on his keyboard and they continue to work through their tears.

* Andrew Trench is the editor of the Daily Dispatch in East London. Click here to go to his blog.

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