He completed his Nieman Fellowship at the end of June 1965, by which time he was short of money and his attempted to extend his visa beyond August seemed unsuccessful. Now living in Harlem, he wrote articles for several newspapers after leaving Harvard, appeared in the television film "The Fruit of Fear" and was planning to write a biography of Miriam Makeba. But two days before his death he told a friend, "I can't laugh anymore and when I can't laugh I can't write." Nakasa seemed homesick, unable to return to South Africa, unsettled and drinking, he became depressed and confessed to friend Nadine Gordimer that he was worried he had inherited his mother's mental illness. On 14 July 1965, he committed suicide when he jumped from his friend's seventh story apartment.