RUTV 3

The Makana Municipality is accused of failing to assist members of Grahamstown east with housing problems caused by the heavy rains experienced last year. Michael Bhusakwe is a victim of Grahamstown’s infrastructural problems and Duduestsang Makuse reports on his situation.

Martin Lund, a fourth year art student talks about what art means to him and how it can change the lives of young children in South Africa.

When we met Devonia, we were very happy to see her! We had had some trouble with our original CJ due to communication problems. We were a bit stressed as we had very little time to do very much work. Luckily, Devonia was ready for action and jumped right into it. Working with Devonia was very easy because she was so willing to improve her journalistic skills. She tackled each project with dedication by spending alot of her time and patience on working with shooting video. Devonia did not have a cell-phone with a camera on it so one had to be arranged for her to use. This used up more valuable time and put us in a very sticky situation, regardless, Devonia never kept us waiting on a deadline or for a meeting. She was always on time and prepared with story ideas, feedback on her footage or some new route that the news stroy could take. She wanted to reprt on the youth of her residential area of Hoogeenoeg.

This shows the position of Devonia

Her first task was to bring us a 10 second clip of absolutely anything (we did mention it would be to her advantage if there was something interesting happening in the shot). Devonia suprised us by arriving with a short clip of a young (underage) boy smoking and this included a brief interview with the boy about where he gets his money for cigarettes. We were impressed by this clip but even more impressed when she did not wait for our critisisms but rather told us. She pointed out that she had allowed shadow to fall on the subjects face and we could sense a strong irritation with herself at making this mistake. We reminded her that it’s all a part of the learning process and she has never repeated that mistake again.

The second task was to get a few different clips that could make up a longer, more well-rounded news story. Devonia decided that she would do this on underage drinking in Hoogeenoeg. However, the light of the night was not enough for her to capture anything on camera so she had to go to plan B: she completed the story of underage smokers by following them into the bushes where they hide from adults and smoke cigarettes. She captured them lighting up, smoking and putting their cigarettes out all the while asking them questions about their pre-mature habit.

Once we had looked at the footage, we placed it in order and showed Devonia how to edit it down using Windows Movie Maker. She cut her clips up and put them together in order and then she wrote down the narration that would put the news story into flow. We recorded this using a microphone plugged straight into the computer and applied it to the visuals. When it was done, Devonia was very happy with her end product and mentioned that she understood all the steps in the process and that she looks forward to creating news clips for Grocott’s online by herself. We look forward to seeing the work that she produces in the future!

Devonia records the narration she has written for the piece

Devonia cuts her clip to fit it in the news story

Devonia edits down the narration on her clip

Diseases that children smokers are at risk of contracting:

Comments on citizen journalism:

For more information click on the above links!

Prinesha Naidoo

An innovative approach to teaching and the improving dwindling literacy levels in rural South Africa and the world. The Grahamstown, South Africa Division of the Molteno Project is facilitated by Rhodes University’s English Department, GADRA Education and the National Department of Education.

Water shortage has been a problem in Grahamstown for many months and little has been done to help the less privilage receive water . Zoli Sakata, a citizen journalist from Grocott’s Mail, reports on how the Grahamstown Fire Department as found a solution to the problem.

Rhodes University Society sign-up eveningThis is a piece about society sign-up evening at Rhodes University. The piece looks at how societies get students to sign-up to their different societies, the tactics they use, the different goodies they promise students etc. It also looks at the meassures SRC have put  in place into making sure that societies do not  only sign-up these students without doing antything constructive with the money. We spoke to difference societies signing up members, students signing up to these societies and Lastly, the SRC President, international vice president and the societies councillor about this matter.