Cape Town-1511011-Cape Times reporter Francesca Villette (left) was the regional winner of the Vodacom Journalism awards in the category Editor's Choice. With her is Aziz Hartley, Deputy Editor of the Cape Times. Cape Town-1511011-Cape Times reporter Francesca Villette (left) was the regional winner of the Vodacom Journalism awards in the category Editor's Choice. With her is Aziz Hartley, Deputy Editor of the Cape Times.
Staff Writer
HER sense of duty and passion for journalism saw Cape Times reporter Francesca Villette become a regional winner in this year’s Vodacom Journalist of the Year Awards.
Villette walked off with the Editor’s Choice award at Friday’s regional awards ceremony at Century City.
She will travel to Johannesburg for the national finals next month.
In February, Villette wrote about a Boland farm school – Errie Moller NGK Primary School – where principal Koos Arendse had used his own money to transport pupils to and from school in his bakkie. He had been doing it for about 20 years and made countless efforts to get the Department of Education to provide a bus.
Villette travelled to Wolseley on her off-day and wrote the story. A week after the report was published, the school received a bus and the lives of Arendse and his pupils were changed.
In a second story, Villette exposed the plight of residents at Klaarstroom, a small informal settlement 450km from Cape Town. Klaarstroom had only one tap and two toilets residents said had not worked for the past two years.
The 30 families had used a nearby river and bush as toilets. Villette, a Cape Times colleague and an Independent Mojo journalist were returning from Prince Albert, where they covered the Indie Karoo Film Festival, at the time.
There was no reason for her to stop, but Villette’s sense for news resulted in her engaging the residents of Klaarwater. She returned to Cape Town and wrote the story.
On the day the story appeared, the authorities finally acted and the toilets and the tap were fixed.
“The award was affirmation that all my hard work had been worth it. I work in an exceptionally devoted team.
“We are always bouncing ideas off each other. When my name was called as the winner of the Editor’s Choice, I was overwhelmed by emotion, honour and jubilation,” Villette said yesterday.
Cape Times editor Aneez Salie said: “We are pleased our choice found favour with the judges over so many other fine entries and we thank them. Francesca Villette is to be warmly congratulated for this achievement, a watershed moment in any journalist’s career.
“Villette is from a new breed of journalists, tech-savvy, virtually born-free, ethical, kick-ass and committed to always seeking the other side. At the Cape Times we require them to write what they like, so that our future may be in good hands.”
The judges commended Villette’s newsroom colleague Carlo Petersen for his body of work – especially his report on the removal of Cecil John Rhodes’s statue at UCT – while Cape Times arts writer Terri Dunbar-Curran was also among the regional finalists.
Convener of the judging panel Mary Papayya said: “The judges find themselves having to make incredibly hard decisions about winners.
“We were presented with excellent entries across the board and congratulate all the winners.”