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Johannesburg - The "native of nowhere" is finally home.
The remains of Nat Nakasa, the anti-apartheid journalist from who died in the United States in 1965 and was buried there until his recent exhumation, arrived on Tuesday in Durban.
Nakasa's casket was escorted on its long journey by a delegation including his sister, Gladys Maphumulo, and other members of his family. On arrival, soldiers marched beside the flag-draped coffin. At an airport ceremony, an animal skin lay underneath the casket in line with mourning tradition.
It was an elaborate homecoming for a talented, anguished man described by many as a victim of apartheid. Nakasa's repatriation served as a sad reminder of the harsh racial politics of the time, but also as an opportunity to celebrate SA's democratic advances since that era of conflict.
"Today Nakasa returns to a South Africa that is remarkably different from the one that he left 50 years ago," Arts and Culture Minister Nathi Mthethwa said.
"He would be pleased to know that this year we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the freedom that he fought for so courageously."
Nakasa's family had viewed his remains and decided not to remove the soil from the bones, keeping a symbolic connection with the American people and the rest of the world, Mthethwa said.
Nakasa worked for Drum magazine and other publications in Johannesburg half a century ago. He left South Africa in 1964 for a Nieman fellowship at Harvard University.
The government at the time had not issued him a passport, making it impossible for him to return home.
In an article titled "A Native of Nowhere", he wrote with sardonic humour about the implications of leaving SA with only a government-issued "exit permit”.
"According to reliable sources, I shall be classed as a prohibited immigrant if I ever try to return to South Africa. What this means is that self-confessed Europeans are in a position to declare me, an African, a prohibited immigrant, bang on African soil. Nothing intrigues me more."
Suicide
At the age of 28, Nakasa plunged from the seventh floor of a building in New York City. His death was ruled a suicide, and he was buried at Ferncliff cemetery in Hartsdale, north of the city.
Ryan Brown, author of "A Native of Nowhere: The Life of Nat Nakasa", has reported how Nakasa felt increasingly alienated in the US, partly because of his uncertain legal situation as a South African unable to return to his country. She also wrote that Nakasa was concerned for himself because of a history of mental illness in his family.
The US and South African governments monitored Nakasa while he was in the United States, which was struggling with its own legacy of racism at the time, according to Brown.
There are conspiracy theories about his death despite a lack of evidence of foul play.
"He died under mysterious circumstances," Mthethwa said in a statement.
The South African National Editors Forum (Sanef) said only that Nakasa died "tragically", and has welcomed the return of his remains.
Nakasa will be reburied on 13 September, ending a long repatriation effort that began in the late 1990s and eventually secured necessary resources and state involvement, it said.
"This is a proud moment for South African journalism and the nation as a whole that we have been able to give Nat his last wish, returning to the land of his birth and to rest eternally with his ancestors," the Sanef said in a statement.
In the US, the writer was buried in the same cemetery as Malcolm X, the civil rights activist assassinated a few months before Nakasa's death.
Nakasa's new resting place will be the Heroes' Acre cemetery in Chesterville, the Durban township where he was born.
Nakasa could have made a difference
The ANC said Nakasa would have helped transform the media industry had he been able to return home.
"Nakasa would have made immense contribution in transforming the media industry had the apartheid government allowed him to return to South Africa after he completed his journalism fellowship in the US," KwaZulu-Natal ANC secretary Sihle Zikalala said in a statement.
"His mysterious death in the US can be blamed on the apartheid regime which refused to allow him to return home."
Zikalala said the return of Nakasa's remains was a reminder of atrocities committed by the apartheid government.
"The return of Nakasa's remains to Durban, his childhood home, closes an excruciating chapter that his family had to endure for five decades, and it also reminds us of the atrocities committed by the apartheid regime against people who fought for equal rights."
