Northern Cape legend chronicled province from birth to adulthood. Editors trusted him without question while politicians feared his facts.
The post on X on Saturday was simple and stark: “The pen is still, but the legacy roars.”
It was posted by MyNorthernCape TV and the subject was Baldwin Ndaba.
He was a legend in the province, a writer through and through, a student activist, a playwright and a journalist who chronicled the country’s ninth and biggest province’s birth from before its conception and its shaky first steps for the next couple of years, before being headhunted to the bright lights of Jozi.
He didn’t win as many awards as he should have.
He wasn’t as publicly recognised as many other, far lesser journalists.
Instead, the true accolade is the esteem his peers and editors held him in, which was exceeded only by the reverence his younger colleagues in the newsroom had for him.
Ndaba was the kind of journalist who didn’t have to be second-guessed.
If he said the sky was green, you didn’t have to look out the window because he would have had all the evidence from meteorological reports to eyewitness affidavits to prove his point.
He was a media lawyer’s delight and the scourge of many an errant politician, from Kakamas to Krugersdorp, some of whom he sent to jail.
Ndaba did journalism the old-fashioned way; shoe leather, personal relationships and working the phone, not reheating press-releases or “curating” social media into stories and plastering a byline at the top.
He was a dream in the dock, the mainstay of every newsroom he worked in and an absolute asset to every editor who had the privilege of working with him.
In a time where words have been devalued through social media incontinence and newspapers have been consigned to the dusty annals of history, Ndaba was the kind of journalist you either respected with a sense of awe, or aspired to become.
He was a patriot in the truest sense, he wanted the best for this country, even though his job often brought him into daily contact with a lot that is the worst of this nation.
He was a community person, loved people, loved his family and loved his partner.
They’re mourning in Kimberley and the Northern Cape this week and there aren’t that many dry eyes among those who knew him in Gauteng, either.
I doubt we will see his like again.
