By Prinesha Naidoo and Daniel Eslick
As citizen journalism is essentially a form of street journalism in which members of the public report on the issues vexing their daily lives, both Dan and I were excited and somewhat apprehensive about working with Nobantu Mancam.
Even though Nobantu suggested we cover interesting news stories, helping her report on the stories from her own perspective took a lot of getting used to as it went against all the journalistic conventions that we had learnt over the past two years.
We also faced a few of technical or rather technological challenges working with Nobantu. The quality of images captured on her Motorolla V360 cell phone, one of the very first cell phones with a built in camera and video recorder was poor and so she borrowed one of our phones for the duration of the course. At first she found it difficult to get to grips with the basic conventions of recording video footage that we taught her, however, her persistence and continued practice paid off toward the end of the course as the quality of her shots improved. She is also far more comfortable behind the camera. Having been most familiar with Microsoft Word, we were impressed with how quickly she managed to get the hang of Windows Movie Maker when we explained it to her – after experimenting with the program for just half an hour, she was keen to try edit her ballroom dancing piece on her own.
The fact that Nobantu is passionate and enthusiastic about working as a citizen journalist in Grahamstown meant that we all had a great working relationship – together, we overcame all our challenges with ease and constantly learnt from each other. Furthermore, working with someone who lived in Hlalani Location was an out of the ordinary experience for both Dan and I, as it gave us instant access to stories on a number of issues that we never even knew existed.
Journalism aside, working with Nobantu and a host of other people, who featured in our stories, was a humbling experience, we were welcomed into the homes and lives of those struggling to make ends meet such as that of a 16 member family who lived in a 2 bedroom RDP house as well as those trying to make a diffrence in the rural community by teaching ballroom dancing. Such experiences taught us to count our blessings and that it is possible to be happy and live a fulfilling life without having to be an Oppenheimer, a Motsepe or Mittal.
This multimedia post documents our time spent with Nobantu.
View Grahamstown through the eyes of a local citizen journalist. in a larger map