Estelle Ellis, the Eastern Cape’s fiercest voice for the voiceless, has died

It is with deep sorrow that we announce the sudden passing of our beloved colleague and friend Estelle Ellis on Wednesday night, 5 August 2026.

Estelle (51) was born in Sasolburg in 1974. She joined Daily Maverick in 2019, and was adored by colleagues across this newsroom and by the Eastern Cape communities she wrote about. She leaves behind parents Kobus and Engela, sisters Tersia and Rene, Rene’s husband Richard, and their children Leah and Jacques. 

Estelle was one of the finest reporters this country has produced, and a powerhouse on our Nelson Mandela Bay team. She told the stories of the Eastern Cape that almost nobody else is telling: the hospitals, the courts, the water crisis, the people the state forgot. She also led Daily Maverick’s reporting on the devastating Covid-19 pandemic. She lived her life with purpose, speaking up for others when they had no voice and challenged those in power to do better – always. 

She did it with rigour and with an enormous heart. The people she wrote about felt seen through her work and experienced the difference from her care and efforts. Estelle’s work was the inspiration for Daily Maverick wanting to do more local journalism because of the impact she’d achieved. 

Estelle walked the corridors of many of the leading news institutions in South Africa. She started her career as an intern at Die Burger. She reported for the Cape Argus, The Star and The Herald in Gqeberha, where she was the justice writer. She had a law degree, an honours in journalism and a postgraduate diploma in future studies. 

Throughout her career, the awards accumulated steadily: four Discovery Health Journalist Awards, the Discovery Community Builder of the Year Award, several Vodacom Journalist of the Year Awards and several Standard Bank Sikuvile Awards. 

Estelle’s impact and commitment went beyond her immense journalistic efforts. She sat on the executive committee of Siyavuka for Kids, which brings community volunteers into the paediatric wards of Nelson Mandela Bay’s state hospitals and is building a children’s hospital in the Eastern Cape, and she had set herself the job of making sure children in the metro were fed properly through the first 1,000 days of their lives. 

She had also coordinated Project Sparkle since 2013, set up to look after doctors, nurses and EMS crews and to upgrade the province’s health infrastructure, and sat on the Just1Hr Leadership Forum since 2015, working on social cohesion in Nelson Mandela Bay. In 2016, she founded Angel Bags, which gives a child who has been in an accident, or who is being moved to a child protection centre, a care package including a blanket, pyjamas, toys, sweets and toiletries.

Estelle’s work shifted things. It helped stop the closure of state frail care facilities in 2019, at a point when that story had the early shape of Life Esidimeni. Her reporting on collapsing paediatric services fed into nurses being appointed at Dora Nginza. A story about a village with no water ended with Gift of the Givers sinking a borehole. Her hunger coverage was the catalyst for Daily Maverick readers putting more than R2-million into a food relief fund. Over the past three years she collaborated with SA Harvest to use this fund to deliver thousands of buckets of nutritious food to families to see them through the festive season. 

It is hard to overstate the immensity of Estelle Ellis’s professional impact. But, above all, Estelle was a kind and supportive person, leaving a profound impression on anyone fortunate enough to meet her. We have lost, too soon, an incredible talent and human being. We, and South Africa, are poorer for her loss. DM