The ceremony was the highlight of Misa's annual general meeting and conference entitled 'Towards and ethical African media' which took place in Windhoek last week.

The award was presented to Louw by Namibian Prime Minister Nahas Angula.

In his acceptance speech, Louw encouraged Prime Minister Angula to push the Namibian Government to ensure that the guarantee of press freedom and free speech as a cornerstone of any democracy is included in the Nepad principles on good governance.

He also called for a renewed campaign on public broadcasting in South Africa.

Louw was a former editor of the Rand Daily Mail, a noted anti-apartheid newspaper in the sixties and seventies.

He later worked at newspapers in the UK and later at the Sunday Times in Johannesburg.

In the run-up to South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994, while Chairman of the Freedom of Expression Institute, he was appointed to the Independent Media Commission to ensure that state broadcasting and state-financed publications were impartial.

During the apartheid era he headed the Media Defence Trust set up to defend media workers against court actions or other censorship practices.

He has widely protested restrictive press legislation and practices and participated in special media freedom missions internationally, headed campaigns for independent broadcasting and continues to be involved in journalism training to date.

He has been awarded the Pringle Prize by the SA Society of Journalists in 1976 and 1992 and been made a Fellow of the International Press Institute.

He also participated in the World Press Freedom Committee-IPI plea to the UN Human Rights Commission on the need to entrench press freedom as a human right.

Louw is also editor and publisher of Southern Africa Report.

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