Laurence Gandar

Laurence Owen Vine Gandar (28 January 1915 – 15 November 1998) was a South African journalist and newspaper editor. He is best known as an editor of South African newspaper The Rand Daily Mail.

Early life Laurence Gandar was born on 28 January 1915 in Durban, Natal, South Africa.

In October 1957, he was offered the role of editor of the Rand Daily Mail, one of many English South African newspapers owned by Anglo American. During June and July 1965, he and journalist Benjamin Pogrund wrote a series of articles on conditions in South African prisons for black South Africans in Port Elizabeth, Pretoria and the Cinderella Prison in Boksburg based on interviews with prison officials and prisoners. The articles cited assaults on prisoners, sodomy and unhygienic conditions in these prisons.

During this period the newspaper was subjected to around the clock surveillance, Security Branch raids, the eavesdropping of the editor, journalists and the newsroom as well as infiltration by police informants and the intimidations and prosecution of informants. The attacks against the newspaper were also taken up by the government controlled South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and the Afrikaner newspapers and silence from the English newspapers. The government would instead of investigating the claims through the means of a judicial inquiry, prosecute two prisoners and two wardens sentencing one to three years in jail, 'confessing' to making up the charges and being a paid informant of the paper, a claim that the Rand Daily Mail was not allowed to challenge at his trial.

They would be charged with contravening South Africa's Prisons Act and would eventually appear in court in November 1968, before Justice P. M. Cillié, in a trial that last 88 days. and in 1990 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Natal. In 2010, he was honoured with a posthumous award as a World Press Freedom Hero from the International Press Institute. Other awards include a gold medal award by the British Institute of Journalists and a World Press Achievement Award in 1966 for his newspaper from the American Newspaper Publishers Association.

Death He retired to the south coast of Natal and played golf and invested in the stock-market. His wife Isobel died in 1989. Laurence Gandar died in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal South Africa on 15 November 1998 shortly after the death of his son, and after several years of illness, from Parkinson's disease.