Gus Cluver

Gus Cluver (b. Stellenbosch, 04/07/1910 – d. Pretoria, 15/09/2001). Journalist.

August de Villiers Cluver started his journalistic career in 1937 as a crime reporter with Die Transvaler and also worked at Die Vaderland and Die Burger before returning to Die Transvaler in 1955 as head of the newspaper’s Pretoria office, where he remained for some 25 years.

As a student cheerleader at the University of Stellenbosch he got to know the future leader of the National Party and Prime Minister John Vorster, with whom he remained on friendly terms. He was one of a number of journalists-to-be who were involved with the making of one of the earliest Afrikaans feature films, Donker Spore (Thomas Blok & J.F. Marais/1944), amongst them Piet Meiring, with whom he wrote Die Transvaler: 50 Jaar. Appropriately, Cluver played a newspaper editor. In addition he was responsible for the story of In die Lente Van Ons Liefde (Louis Wiesner/1967), a film about student life at the University of Stellenbosch, as well as for some of the songs used. He married Maria Steenkamp in 1940.

His son is the renowned linguist August Cluver.

In 1986 he was awarded a special Medal of Honour for Journalism by the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns.