First Work Shop

A brief look at Grahamstown (Introduction)

Grahamstown is a small Eastern Cape student town that is reflective of South Africa at large, in terms of large racial inequalities. The town’s citizens, like everywhere in South Africa are racially divided in terms of their residential areas and wealth. You find black people in the largely poor townships and then not too far from there, you find the coloured areas which are also largely poor. There isn’t much of an Indian community here, however the little number there is, can be closely associated with the white community of Grahamstown. There is also a small but growing black middle class community; this community is made up of professional teachers, nurses and police officers. The white community in Grahamstown lives a very different life from the black and coloured communities. The white people in this town are more financially secure and are able to lead middle class lives, where as the black and coloured communities are characterised by large unemployment and poverty. The Egazini theatre group we are working with is located with in the largely poor areas of Grahamstown.



The First Work-shop


We met with the Egazini team as planned from 3pm - 5pm on the 26th of March 2010.

We had four out of five present. Mfamfa excused herself as her child was ill. So the people that were present are: Vuyolwethu (the only female), Aya, Bheza and Luvuyo.

We started at 3:15pm and started by setting out aims of the project and codes of conduct. We agreed that we are gonna draw up a contract on the codes of conduct that we agreed on and everyone (ourselves) included will sign them. This will help to make sure people commit themselves and take the project seriously.


The group agreed that they like the idea of having the produced plays played on community radio stations like Radio Grahamstown or Kowie fm (based in Port Alfred). So Vicky & I will have to set that up later in the term.

The exercises went very well. Perhaps exercise one ran bit overtime but that's something will try and monitor in the future.

What was clear in the end is that the group feels very strongly about their communities and they do not want the plays to portray the township in a "bad light"

Exercise 1: Gave light to their personality and what drives each of the guys.

Exercise 2: This was the most exciting as they revealed their favourite characters and they played them out a bit. Because they are so used to stage performance they do a lot movement & a couple of visual things that would not necessarily work for radio, so we need to work on that with them.

Exercise 3: This revealed a number of potential plays that we may do.
In brief: The guys are critical of a lot of government services such the police, ambulances and Teenage pregnancy.

Bhiza told a personal & emotional story about how his mother was shot by criminals and he called the ambulance services but because it took for ever he had to watch his mom die.

Luvuyo also told an interesting story on how his friends keep robbing stores in the communities and trying to get him (Luvuyo) involved as well. He likes his friends and he wishes there was a way that he could help them stop their activities. He says some people in the location also view him in a bad light because of his friends.

Linking with Journalism theory

At first I strongly believed that a journalist’s job was simply to go out to the communities and find a story that would make the front page with out really engaging on an emotional level with the sources or trying to find a solution with the community as suggested by the principles of development journalism .

But after being introduced to ideas of Civic and Development journalism, I came to the realisation that people are not just sources for us journalist to extract the best selling story
ideas. It dawned on me that a lot of the people that live in the poor parts of Grahamstown do not have much of a platform to tell their stories and have their views heard. Rhodes University students and staff members are shielded from the difficulties that less privileged people in Grahamstown face. If Bhiza had a medical aid he would have been able to call the private ambulance (which responds faster than the state ambulance) and perhaps save his mother’s life however because of his underprivileged situation his family can’t afford medical aid.

I think the work that we will produce with the Egazini theatre group will be media content, which moves away from presenting citizens as passive or helpless people but rather as active individuals seeking solutions to their own problems.

I also believe the manner we structured the first workshop promoted ideas of democracy and development in the sense that as the facilitators of the workshop using some civic journalism principles. We gave everyone equal opportunities to speak and the fact that there is a great desire to air the radio drama plays on Radio Grahamstown & Kowie fm is an indicator of the group’s commitment towards development within their communities.

We attempted the idea of “civic conversations” by Tanni Haas, “The goal should not be to find the quote [but rather] to discover patterns in what people are saying, to probe to uncover meaning and figure out how people’s thinking unfolds as they talk” I tend to agree with Haas here, as journalist practicing civic journalism principles, we need to get rid of the whole “formal interview” concept, where community members are seen as sources. But to rather look into working together and find stories that are truly representative of some aspects of their communities.