‘Oom Des’ celebrates 50 years of journalism

EVERGREEN Des Erasmus, better known as ‘Oom Des’, on August 1 celebrated 50 years as a journalist.

Despite his advanced age, Des Erasmus is still a voracious newshound and currently serves as editor of Die Republikein’s Erongo edition.In a sense Des Erasmus’ story needs no telling as his career of half a century is in the public domain, with every day of his career carefully and correctly recorded on the pages of several newspapers, where many thousands of people, now and in the past, have become used to the byline.Tragedies, suspense, politics and humour are threaded through his thousands of articles – many that have even brought about change; if not to the country as a whole, then to the life of a single Namibian.He has written about 2 600 columns – besides the news articles – which works out to roughly one column every day for the last 50 years.There are quite a number of stories that have made an impact on his life. Des Erasmus has seen and experienced some defining moments in the history of Namibia. One event which he mentions immediately is the aircraft crash at the old airport near Windhoek in 1968, in which 124 people died.And for a journalist who’s seen it all, he can even draw some amusement value from this tragic event, recounting the difficulties he faced to get the story out – especially with trying to get to the scene and entering the crash area and the protocol involved.’It was a big, very tragic story,’ he said, recalling the details of the accident. ‘I still sometimes wake up at night having dreamt of the carnage.’Oom Des, now 72, took his first steps as a professional journalist on August 1 1959, when he joined the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), and soon became the youngest area editor for the SABC in southern Africa.After about six years, he entered the newspaper trade with Die Suidwester and its subsidiary Joernaal, where he was a reporter and eventually became editor until 1981.Since then he has served as reporter and eventually editor on Democratic Media Holdings’ Die Republikein, as well as its subsidiaries, Sunday Republikein, Times of Namibia and Tempo; before stepping out of the fast lane to become editor of the newspaper’s Erongo edition, for the past decade.Oom Des was awarded Southern Africa’s Journalist of the Year, at the Sanlam media awards, for Community Press in 2000. With wife Anneli, the seasoned hack has earned and won more than 60 journalism awards.Apart from journalism, Oom Des has published five short story collections about Namibia and its people.He said the most rewarding aspect of his job is to know and hear ‘Job well done!’ for a published article.’I cannot sit around and do nothing. I must have a story, and if there’s nothing, I feel I must find something to report on. This is what I live for. If a story happens, I’ll leave everything and make sure I get the story,’ he said. ‘A story still excites me, and the next big story I would like to cover is just that next big story that comes up.’During a recent Swakopmund Town Council meeting, Swakopmund Mayor Germina Shitaleni congratulated Oom Des for reaching the milestone of 50 years on the job.’We all agree that he has set a very high standard of reporting and it is our wish that his efforts will be emulated by those that are coming after him,’ Shitaleni said.