By Shaun Smillie
The Star's photographic department has claimed the photographic African Journalist of the Year prize for the fifth time in a decade.
Debbie Yazbek, The Star's chief photographer, walked away with the Mohamed Amin Prize at the CNN MultiChoice African Journalist awards, in Nairobi at the weekend.
She won the prize for a picture essay she did on Nelson Mandela, in which she focused on his retirement and his time with Graça Machel.
Yazbek is the fifth in a long line of Star photographers to have claimed the prize.
They include TJ Lemon, Themba Hadebe, Siphiwe Sibeko and Neo Ntsoma.
Of 15 awards given out this time, South African journalists picked up five. Besides Yazbek, South African winners included Independent Foreign Service correspondent Benjamin Joffe-Walt, in recognition of an article he wrote on refugees living in Sudan's Darfur region. Other winners were Nkepile Mabuse of e.tv and Jessica Pitchford, of the SABC's Special Assignment programme.
The overall winner was freelance Kenyan TV journalist Angelo Kinyua, in praise of his documentary on the dying days of a cancer patient in Nairobi.
This is the 10th anniversary of the prestigious award, which is open to professional journalists and technicians born in Africa and working on the African continent.
There were 630 entries for this year's award, the entrants hailing from 40 countries.