RUTV 3

The ANCYL President Julius Malema is making headlines all-over the country lately. His ‘controversial’ statements put him in the spotlight. This time around he was said to come and address Rhodes students, staff and Grahamstown community at large. People came in droves and we were there too to listen to ANCYL president delivering his talk. He never showed up and SASCO representatives cited Rhodes Management as the ones who did not allow Malema to come. This sparked an angery response from Student Services Officer Larissa Klazinga who said that SASCO was lying that Rhodes did not allow Malema to come. There was an exchange of rather harsh words between Klazinga and the ANC Loyalists due to the fact that after the talk by Bhuti Manamela there was no question and answer session as expected.

 The Gender Action Project (GAP) representatives attended the rally with clear intentions that they would challenge everything to be said in the rally. And at some stage there was a clash between ANC loyalists and those who stand for women right issues in conjuction with GAP. The activists were also not happy with the way they were treated at this rally. These activists were holding up placards with statements that have been said by ANC President Jacob Zuma and ANCYL President Julius Malema.

However, the rally continued with Bhuti Manamela Young Communist League Secretary-General addressing the crowd [podcast][\podcast]. Before Manamela could begin his talk the crowd was kept entertained by a group performing on stage. The hall was full to capacity and also outside the hall there were people in large numbers anticipating the arrival of Malema.

As reperters we could have taken any angle  for the story as there was so much happening in there. And due to time constraints we could not include all that happened in the rally. However, you can have a look at some inserts that were filmed during this ANC rally bellow…

Click bellow for the story

 Click bellow for more on GAPs President views

 Click bellow to view the performance…

 Bellow is the discontent activist…

With new found pride at finally being RUTV reporters, Zikhona and I embarked on our story. A simple topic, investigating why campaign posters have been banned on campus, proved to be challenging to film and condense into a focused 1 and a half minute news story.

Technical glitches

On our first day of filming – we had set up an interview with Siyabonga Yonzi, a politics honours student – we decided to get to our set location early to be super prepared. To our great frustration and embarrassment, we realised once the camera was unpacked and securely on its tripod that we had stupidly forgotten a tape at home.

Click here to watch a clip of Siyabonga that we did not use in the final story due to an unappealing sniff (or snort) mid-answer:

 Off the record interviews

While “off the record” sounds really journalistic, it turned out to be more problematic than expected. We were told by an anonymous source that Rhodes has not yet legislated the decision to ban campaign posters on campus. The decision allegedly only appears on SRC meeting minutes.

Findind a focus

We made the mistake of getting all our visuals and conducting interviews with no clear purpose or story angle in mind. When we finally sat down with all our footage we had to ask ourselves repeatedly “what is the story?” While writing to visuals is a strength of the image school principle, our visuals failed us in that they were not amazing and we didn’t have interesting sequences to work with.

Looking at our final story, I realise that we failed to establish a clear angle. We should have either pursued the lack of a paper trail angle or interrogated the claims by the University that posters harm the aesthetics (the visual feel and appeal) of campus.

Click here to hear Kholosa Loni, Rhodes SRC President, revealing the flaw in University Management’s argument (a rare ‘going against the authorities’ moment):

 [podcast]http://rutv3.ru.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/soundclipforblog1.mp3[/podcast]

Interviewing a DA leader

Interviewing Mike Lewis, a DA leader for the Makana Municipality, was not that fruitful. He did, however, take a stab at student partying and Pirates Pizza (despite asking him about posters!). We decided not to include him in the final story as we did not want our story to in any way favour the DA or only give a voice to one political party.

Click here to see a Democratic Alliance leader letting his political correctness slip for a few seconds:

We definitely learnt some tough lessons through producing this news story. However, they will prove to be helpful in terms of avoiding the same mistakes in future projects.

Rhodes University 3rd year student Phakamani Lisa is COPING just fine. With the upcoming South African national elections on the 22nd of April 2009, she knows exactly where her ballot is going to go- for ANC breakaway party, COPE. With student apathy a major concern, Phakamani provides a refreshing perspective as to why she has placed her hope in COPE.

Nonceba Mhlawuli, secretary of the ANCYL at Rhodes University, gives her opinion on the upcoming elections. According to her, Cope is no better than the ANC as it is lead by ex-ANC members – “what makes them better now?” – and Cope member have abandoned the legacy of the ANC. She also feels Malema is a bad role model for the youth of South Africa, but, in her eyes, he retains his status as a good leader of the ANCYL.

ROAR president Kathryn McConnachie tells us how animal rights fit into the current elections.

Grethe Koen finds out why animal rights have been so sorely neglected in these electoral debates as well as the common indifference towards animal rights by many South Africans.

The story idea came about after a fellow journalist interviewed Rhodes COPE representative, Loyiso Phantshwa, after the COPE launch on Rhodes campus. During the interview Phantshwa revealed that he was a member of SASCO. We thought this would be a great story considering SASCO has always been affiliated with the ANC and recently on the Butterworth campus, a violent riot broke out between SASCO and COPE because SASCO was called to reject any COPE members. Had COPE infiltrated SASCO Rhodes?  Would SASCO split?

We set up an interview with Rhodes SASCO president Xanti Njozela, for the following morning, however, we needed confirmation and we needed numbers of how many SASCO members were now aligned with COPE before the interview. I then conducted a telephonic interview with Phantshwa to get confirmation of his membership and how many other COPE affiliates were members of SASCO. He confirmed that he was a member though was not active, also confirming around fifty COPE members were part of SASCO.

We conducted the interview with Njozela the following morning. He could neither confirm nor deny the number of COPE members, but maintained there was no potential split. Most of what he said was contrary to Phantshwa’s statements. We knew we had to set up an interview with him to reveal the contradiction and represent the very powerful things he had said over the phone. Due to the time limit of 90secs we really had to focus the insert and stick to the infiltration of COPE in SASCO. So unfortunately we had to leave out of some very controversial accusations made by Phantshwa regarding ANC ideology within SASCO discourse as well as Njozela’s initial denial of bowing to ANC policyand then his eventual defence of SASCO’s support for the ANC.