Second Blog: Further and deeper insight to community issues

We met with the Egazini theatre group for the second time last week. The workshop was held at the Africa Media Matrix building (AMM). The exercises included a listening session; we played a locally produced radio drama titled “Beauty & the beats”.


The second exercise was a discussion about social issues within the group’s community and how we can use the genre of radio drama to truthfully depict the realities of the local locations. The second exercise in my mind was the most useful in terms of generating ideas and gaining further & deeper insight of the communities that our group comes from ( I will come back to this point later ). The third and final exercise was an impromptu “acting session” in studio and we also had a play back session where the actors listened to themselves critically.

Community Issues

If you can think back to my last blog I briefly mentioned that some of the issues or themes that emerged from the first workshop included teenage pregnancy, poor government services (Police, Ambulance, clinics etc.), crime and youth excessive drinking (something that Rhodes University students can identify with too).

I would like to believe that exercise two from the second workshop gave us further insight to these issues. The teenage pregnancy issue has multi dimensions to it, such as the lack of communication between parents and their teenage son’s and daughters about sex and pregnancy preventative measures. This might be an unfair generalisation but none the less it appears that the rude attitude that nurses at local clinics show towards young girls, who go for contraceptive injections, discourages teenage girls from going to clinics as they often get embarrassed for being sexually active.

Another issue that came up which I believe will be interesting to investigate further, is the absence of the father figure in parenting female teenagers. Apparently it’s a mother’s duty to talk about sex to their daughters. I think it would be interesting to find out as to why the father figure is absent? Is it an African or Xhosa culture thing? What are the opinions of African or Xhosa fathers on teenage pregnancy? These and more are the questions I would like to find answers to. Its also interesting to keep in mind or note that “modern” and younger African fathers are more involved in the upbringing of their children. However the older and perhaps less modern and less educated generation of African / Xhosa fathers are largely absent from their child’s upbringing. I’m not insinuating that the more involved fathers love their children more or vice versa.

Another major theme that came up is the lack of communitarian type setting when it comes to certain issues. Communitarianism looks at the way shared conceptions of the good (values) are formed, transmitted, justified and enforced. Hence the interest in communities, historically transmitted values and morals and the societal units that transmit and enforce values such as the family, schools and voluntary associations like social clubs, churches etc.

As I pointed out above when it comes to “frowned upon” issues such as teenage pregnancy, the community is also absent and so there is absolutely no support system for those who find themselves pregnant at a young age in these communities. When one takes a closer look you will note that what seems to be an individual (pregnancy issue) is actually a shared reality of the community and I think our job as media producers will be to make the shared reality visible.

Well that’s all for this week.