Cape Town — AllAfrica's deputy managing editor, Juanita Williams, has been honoured with a top South African award for her service as a leader of the country's principal forum for editors.

The South African National Editors' Forum (Sanef) announced on Monday that Williams is the recipient of the forum's Wrottesley Award. The award recognizes "excellent service" to Sanef, as well as "extraordinary commitment to work towards the achievement of the association's goals."

Williams served as treasurer of Sanef from 2007 to 2012. Based in the Cape Town office of AllAfrica, she supervises staff responsible for updating the English-language site, allAfrica.com, from offices in Cape Town, Monrovia, Nairobi and Washington, DC. Together with staff in the Dakar office who produce the French-language fr.allafrica.com, they post up to 2,000 items daily on the multi-media website.

Her award is named for Stephen Wrottesley, a former chief of staff for Independent Newspapers, South Africa, who was instrumental in the formation of the forum.

Since its foundation following South Africa's first democratic elections, Sanef has become the country's principal organisation among working journalists which defends media freedoms.

In the same announcement, Sanef named South Africa's press ombudsman, Joe Thloloe, as winner of the Nat Nakasa Award for courageous journalism "in recognition of his fearlessness and extraordinary contribution to newspaper journalism in South Africa."

Thloloe is one of South Africa's most respected editors, who was detained without trial, tortured and jailed under apartheid, and has fought for press freedom both under apartheid and in the democratic era. He is also a former recipient of the Wrottesley Award.