Closing the Circle

 By Kezia Swanepoel

The end is nigh for our Civic Mapping Project and the end looks so very different from what we all imagined back in August. 

When we first heard the words "public journalism" we did not know where to start. Our public meeting was invaluable in determining the aims of what we wanted to achieve in our wards from the responses we received. The problems were endless but there was something we could do. By using different forms of media to report on the problems raised by the people and giving them a voice, we were able to achieve the aim of publicly reporting. In our pieces, there is a strong theme for the call for accountability. The problems such as housing and rubbish collection have only gotten worse over the years for the residents of wards 8 and 7 without any help from Makana Municipality. What we wanted was to get the authorities to notice and ideally do their job but this is not enough for the people we met. Our aims had to adapt themselves to the devastation these people felt because they had not been heard or helped for so long.

Therefore we managed to ruffle authority’s feathers and provide some form of a solution to one of the problems, recreation for the youth, by holding a soccer day and soccer clinic. Through our journalism on the ground, we made more secure relationships with the local residents because we used our journalism for their benefit. In the end, I believe we managed to close the circle on our general aim.

Our final WEPD distributions have highlighted the problems through a story on the soccer day and a photo essay on the demise of soccer clubs in the area. This photo essay dealt with a little known piece of history that explains the dilemma of the future- there is no recreation for the youth. This issue is important when looked at below surface level. The soccer culture used to be beneficial in shaping the youth and providing them with support and companionship yet this has been replaced by shebeens who show the games to locals. By raising this issue and thrusting it in the public eye, one can hope that more will be done to avoid neglecting the youth and reviving a once beneficial pastime.