The Mamelodi Voice: June 2013

Wednesday 19 June 2013

Rape Campaign Event

On the 8th of June 2013, The Sexual and Gender-based Violence Campaign held its first rape campaign event in Mamelodi.

The Sexual and Gender-based Violence Campaign partnered with: Life Line, Itsoseng Clinic, Community Police Forum, Sonke Gender Justice Network, Izwelithini Community Development Project and the community.

The drives aims to inform rape victims about the steps that they need to take after a rape case. They also inform them about which conselling and treatment facilities they can go to.

In the video below, are some of the events that took place during the launch.

Mamelodi Book Drive

The Humanities Faculty at the University of Pretoria held a book drive in Mamelodi on the 1st of June 2013. The book drive was inspired by the Nelson Mandela Day Project which encourages people to give 67 minutes of their time to charity. This in commemoration of the 67 years that Mandela devoted to serving his community and country.

The purpose of the book drive is to collect and distribute books to three primary schools in Mamelodi: Mogale Primary School, Nwa Vangani Primary School and Dr IM Monare Primary School.

This year Ms Leti Kleyn, a Academic Literacy lecturer at UP, hoped to establish three reading rooms at the primary schools which are to benefit from the book drive.

In the video below we have a few people associated with the book drive initiative share their views on the importance of reading.

Tuesday 18 June 2013

Behind the scenes: 4 days to go

We only have 4 days left to work on The Mamelodi Voice and as you can see, we are working hard to produce a paper worth reading

"The Mamelodi Voice is not a job, or an assignment, it is a privilege and a lot like a roller-coaster ride."

Mart-Marie van den Berg was the editor of the Mamelodi Voice in 2010. She wrote a note on her experience

“The Mamelodi Experience,” as I like to call it, is a fulfilling, exciting and daunting task. We barely knew each other before we boarded the first bus that would take us to the opening of the Gauteng Legislature at the Mamelodi Campus of the University of Pretoria. We were a shivering, wet and miserable-looking group of journalism students who waited a couple of hours for the Premier of Gauteng to arrive. The assignment was easy: report on the opening of the Legislature, but it was like first year orientation – the initial suffering will bond a group. That was our first Mamelodi outing, and it was full steam ahead from there.

Two months later we suddenly had titles – sub-editors, layout artists, copy editors, you name it. As editor, I kept the fact to myself that I had no idea where we should start, or how we should go about “this reporting thing” as one of the Mamelodi Voice journalists called it.

So we started by visiting Mamelodi (sometimes more than four times a week) and asked the locals what they want to read about. Then we started having fun, fights and sleepless nights. I wanted to scream when I had to read an article for the 35^th time, but someone had to do it, and I was not the only one. We had a great team, with the exception of some members who literally were great at just not being there. Those who were there everyday pulled more than their own weight and made my job easier.

It is not all hard and certainly not all easy, but reading the first printed copy makes it all worth it. Suddenly you forget the tears, arguments and blurry eyes from staring at the computer and just revel in the success of the past couple of months.

My favourite moments:

Experiencing the hospitality of the Mams locals first-hand – every time we visited.

Early morning cupcake-and-coffee sessions with our Editorial Manager, Musi Kahimbaara, Deputy Editor, Reinart Toerien and News Editor Marthé Kotze.

Hearing the “Mamelodi at Night”-stories after Maryke van Staden and Musi Kahimbaara partied with the locals.

Seeing the first printed edition and thinking, “We actually did it!”

The Mamelodi Voice is not a job, or an assignment, it is a privilege and a lot like a roller-coaster ride: A hell of a lot of fun with whoops of joy coming out of your mouth on the climb while the downhill sees you trying not to pee in your pants.

Friday 14 June 2013

What to expect, stories captured in pictures

A glimpse into the stories that each reporter is working on

Story by: Abigail Javier and Bonita Du Plessis
Pictured: Koketso Dlongolo and Bonita Du Plessis enjoying a meal from a street cafe.

Story by: Buntu Mawu and Aimee Delagay
Pictured: Softball team from the Mamelodi Softball Foundation

Story by: Simisola Jolaoso
Pictured: Simisola with Bongani Nkosi, who does fossil casting

Story by: Sungani Phiri
Pictured: Tebogo Mmotlana at the Red Square social in Mamelodi

Story by: Dikgang Kekana
Pictured: Ms Earth South Africa at the Walter Sisulu Environmental Centre in Mamelodi

Story by: Natalie Ryder
Pictured: Abigail Javier with bikers Urban Fellas at a rape campaign in Mamelodi

Story by: Neil Pretorius
Pictured: Edwin Smith and Neil outside the Mae Jamison US Science Reading Room on Mamelodi Campus

Behind the scenes: 7 days to go

With 7 days to go till the final copy has to be completed the layout and copy team is working tirelessly to place and edit the articles for the newspaper.

Tuesday 11 June 2013

Raising The Mamelodi Voice

Marenet Jordaan, one of the Journalism lecturers at the University of Pretoria, shares some insight on The Mamelodi Voice.

Three years ago the Journalism students of the University of Pretoria began a reporting project in Mamelodi. Most were new to the area, and many said they felt lost. This changed quickly when they met the people of Mamelodi, who opened up their hearts and poured out their stories of goodwill, hope and, yes, sometimes heartache.

Since 2010 we have made many friends here. We love coming back to visit the projects, schools and clinics that do so much to uplift and encourage this community. The Mamelodi Voice is our attempt at giving a voice to the friends we have made along the way. We want to be a place where the efforts-and struggles-of these community heroes can be visible to everyone around them.

However, we are not in the business of providing only free publicity. We do real reporting and photojournalism. Where there is good news, we will tell it. Where there are problems,we will report on them as well.

Doing reporting in Mamelodi is also a wonderful learning opportunity for our Journalism students. They get the opportunity to get out of the comfort zone of the classroom and into real life reporting situations. While this might be uncomfortable, it is the quickest way to learn. We applaud the second year Journalism class of 2012 for their determination and innovation during this reporting project.

To the staff of the Summer 2012 edition of The Mamelodi Voice: you have put together and exceptional publication. You can be proud of the way you worked together as a team. But you should be especially proud of the way you managed to make this a community newspaper.

For in the end, The Mamelodi Voice belongs to Mamelodi

Finding our voice

Head of the Journalism Department Pippa Green's thoughts on the launch of The Mamelodi Voice.

Welcome to the first edition of The Mamelodi Voice, a newspaper produced entirely by the second-year class in the Journalism Programme of the University of Pretoria. It is the result of an extensive community reporting project first launched by the Journalism Programme in 2010.

Mamelodi is one of the oldest townships in Pretoria, but it gets little local media coverage unless it is about crime, or about protests or about disasters. Yet it is a community rich in history and heritage with a present that brims with vitality and diversity.

We have found there, a host of community projects, the result of co-operation between the community, civil society, foreign embassies, international and local students and UP's own Mamaledi campus.

We hope this newspaper will help establish a stronger voice for both the community and the project workers who work so hard there, mostly out of sight.

Our heartfelt thanks go to Mr Edwin Smith, director of the Mamelodi campus, to Ms Helen Smith, South African representative of the Mamelodi Trust. to the community project workers and volunteers, and to the people of Mamelodi themselves for making this project possible.

We are proud of the entire second year class, who embarked on this story-telling venture with enthusiasm and commitment, and particularly of the dedicated editorial team who put this newspaper together.

Behind the scenes: 10 days to go

With 10 days to go till the final page proofs of The Mamelodi Voice have to be in, this is what we've been up to.

The Mamelodi Voice on TOMz

Behind the scenes of our Mamelodi Voice SABC shoot

Head of the University of Pretoria's Journalism Department, Professor Pippa Green giving feedback on our stories.

The SABC featured our class for one of their educational programmes, Teenagers on a Mission (TOMz). The segment of the show which features The Mamelodi Voice aims to teach children how a newspaper is put together. The shoot happened in our journalism room where we had a news diary session. Everyone presented their story ideas and we all gave input about what would work for The Mamelodi Voice and what wouldn't.

The episode is expected to air on SABC 1, sometime in September.

Follow TOMz on twitter: @TOMz_SABC_1

"As with all projects like this, it's beginnings were humble"

Ruan Mulder was the editor for The Mamelodi Voice 2011. He wrote a brief note on his experience as editor of The Mamelodi Voice.

It’s not often that one gets to be involved in a project with such far reaching effects such as The Mamelodi Voice. When I got asked to be Editor, I obviously had ideas of where I would’ve liked the paper to go but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine how big it would become.

As with all projects like this, its beginnings were humble. As a second year group we went into the unknown and discovered things we’d never thought we’d find. Not only were we lucky enough to discover what the community of Mamelodi had to offer, but we got to discover parts of ourselves that we didn’t know existed. Our group was passionate and full of talent and as a result the stories and photographs we had were top notch and gave the readers a true insight into the community of Mamelodi. This allowed us the opportunity to put together a truly insightful paper.

The process was an arduous one that took many hours. We struggled with putting something together that none of us have ever done, a believable newspaper, but after late nights and many brainstorming sessions it started to flow. The turning point for us was the day we had our first full draft. Suddenly ideas were flowing and the paper started looking like something we would be proud of. Before we knew it, it was the day before the paper needed to go to print. That final day we left the University at 6am the day of print, exhausted but completely content because we had pulled together as a team and produced an amazing project.

The Mamelodi Voice has gone on to become an annual feature and allows Journalism students from the University of Pretoria to be a part of something that not only features their skills as young budding journalists but allows them to bring a little soulful part of Mamelodi to every reader it reaches.

Putting a newspaper together is no small feat

Danielle Petterson was the editor of The Mamelodi Voice for the 2012 edition. Here she talks about how she grew attached to the paper, what it was like working with her team and her advice for future editors.

When I applied to be editor of The Mamelodi Voice, I never dreamed that I would get the job. I thought it more likely that I would be chosen as news editor, my second choice. Imagine my shock when I was announced as the editor.

Entirely overwhelmed and no idea where to begin, I was the boss and everyone was looking to me for guidance.

Working on The Mamelodi Voice had its ups and downs. Looking back I probably would have done things completely differently. But that was the point – to learn.

Between the copy editors who thought they were only proof readers and the ones who thought it okay to change quotes, I had my work cut out for me. Not only that but the layout artists had zero experience and some of them seemed to have difficulty following the very clear instructions set out for them, like font type and size. I felt like the editorial team spent a lot of time doing the jobs of some of the copy editors and layout artists simply because they didn’t do their jobs properly (or in a few cases, at all). Despite this, we managed to pull together a newspaper.

The editorial team spent long hours editing articles, rethinking headlines, choosing photos, fixing layout… the list goes on. We disagreed often and several fights ensued. I guess you could call it a clash of completely opposite personalities. At times it seemed like some of the staff members were trying to take over. On the other hand, some did nothing unless given a specific task along with clear instructions on how to carry it out. Despite all this, I couldn’t have done it without them.

When you spend as much time working on a newspaper as I did, you grow attached. I began to see it as my baby and kept referring to it as my paper rather than our paper. Despite this attachment, it was a relief to finish and see the final product. Looking at the paper now, there are lots of things I wish I could fix. But who puts a newspaper together perfectly on their first try?

To call us amateurs when it came to putting together a newspaper would be an understatement. As much as I learnt from the experience, I am in no rush to take on such a mammoth task again. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy it. When it’s midnight, you’ve had a few glasses of wine, and you’ve been fixing things like spacing and alignment for the past few hours, you can’t help but laugh hysterically at everything and have fun.

Working on The Mamelodi Voice really opened my eyes. I never dreamed that I would ever go into Mamelodi, talk to the people there, learn about their lives. But after having about 15 pre-schoolers hanging on me at a time and listening to the teachers talk about their passion for their jobs and love for the children, despite all their difficulties, I developed a great respect for them. They were some of the kindest, friendliest people I’ve met. You should never judge people you’ve never met because of their situation. People have the capacity to constantly surprise you.

My advice to future editors of The Mamelodi Voice would be just to start. We started very slowly and wasted a lot of valuable time. It’s scary at first, but the sooner you get going, the sooner you get the hang of it. Delay will only cause you great stress and a lot of late nights. If you end up in that position, keep calm and drink wine.

Monday 10 June 2013

The Mamelodi Voice 2013 Team

We have a team of 19 individuals who are working on The Mamelodi Voice 2013 edition. Although we all have distinct roles that we play, we also double up as reporters. Every story that will be featured in the newspaper has been reported on by each member of the team.