I am not Jewish, nor am I Muslim. I do not understand how much the conflict in Israel means to South African Jews and South African Muslims.
This week at taught me lot about that when I covered an incident of hate speech on campus for the University of Witswatersrand student paper. I also learnt how hard being fair as a journalist really was.
Here is a breakdown of the story:
A year ago, The Palestinian Solidarity Committee invited a leading trade unionist from COSATU (Congress of South African Trade Unions) to speak at their Israel Apartheid week. His name is Bongani Masuku.
His comments included:
“…as we struggle to liberate Palestine from the racists, fascists and Zionists who belong to the era of their Friend Hitler! We must not apologise, every Zionist must be made to drink the bitter medicine they are feeding our brothers and sisters in Palestine. We must target them, expose them and do all that is needed to subject them to perpetual suffering until they withdraw from the land of others and stop their savage attacks on human dignity…”.
“… all who have not accepted or woken up to the reality that we now live in a democratic South Africa where racism or promotion of it is a crime, are free to leave the country. I repeat whether Jew or whomsoever does so, must not just be encouraged but forced to leave, for such a crime is so heinous it can’t be tolerated…”.
So in response a Jewish organisation, the Jewish Board of Deputies, complained to the Human Rights Commission (HRC). The HRC ruled that what Masuku said was hate speech. For the rest of the drama read the full story.
Doing this story was an eye-opener to the tensions that exist between between the Wits Jewish students, the Wits Palestinian supporters (Muslims) and the black Wits political students who support Palestine.
It was also an eye-opener in terms of how hard it is to be a journalist that is fair and tells both sides of the story. I think it was easier for me to tell this story as I am not involved in Israel or in the ethnic groups.
Although I was amazed at how easy it is to find myself slightly being biased. I think one of my Jewish sources, Benji, is super cool, very charming and good looking and I had to keep checking I didn't favour his side of the story. He has gone out of his way to help me with stories before and he is so intelligent and lovely. Charm is powerful.
I always thought ethics were easy: tell the truth, get one's quotes right and don't acccept bribes.
But ethics are so much more subtle than that. It comes down to how one orders the story, which quotes one uses and the title and photos that one chooses. In short - how it is written.
All I had was my judgement and I already know that I felt a little biased by how nice the Jewish students were, how rude the trade union was and how unhelpful the Palestinian Solidarity Commitee was.
And then at a University bar on Thursday night, a long-term photojournalist tells me how often journalists are offered bribes when covering African stories and how his editor was once in on a plan with a long term source to offer him a bribe. Had the photojournalist taken it, he would have lost his job after years of working for this editor.
"The media chews you up and spits you out," he told me. "They don't teach you that at journ school," he added.
Pity they don't warn us. Pity we only had 2 or 3 lectures on ethics when I studied journalism last year. Not enough to help with stories like this one in which Jewish and Muslim students were so sensitive and so personally involved.
I am entering a minefield as I start my career as a journalist.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
UCT's shocking administration and bad customer care
Universities teach Business, Administration and how to get ahead.
They don't teach their staff. My sister has not received an admissions letter although the electronic computer system shows she is accepted to the University of Cape Town. She is missing her compulsory University Orientation because she did not get the required documentation from UCT. She called and the lady at the admissions centre was rude to her. I heard my sister say the letter she needed hadn't arrived about 8 times. My sister knows she has been accepted because she can access the students admissions computer system.
Then after being told to wait for her admissions letter (UCT orientation has started already) she phoned the Humanities Department. They told her orientation had started and were not much help either. She was cut off so she phoned again and was shouted at for not being organised and at O-week. Nobody helped her or admitted that because she hadn't received the required documentation, it was UCT's fault. I studied a business course at UCT . There was place for me at the last minute because many of those accepted into the course didn't show up for registration. Many of those that did turn up, hadn't recieved acceptance letters either. How many UCT students don't hear they have a place and fail to come to University because of their acceptance letters not arriving? Yes UCT has electronic admissions status but only 2% of this country has access to the Internet.
Interestingly accounts showing what one money one owes always arrive. My sister has been sent a fee account but no acceptance letter for her course.
I was a Wits student last year. Registering to study was a nightmare. I then couldn't access the University for weeks because it took weeks before my student card was activated to allow me to park.
Friends of mine were billed for courses they had paid for. Wits has a reputation of having disastrous administration.
How can Universities be run in such a haphazard fashion and be filled with professors who know all about management, organisation, computer systems and leadership? They don't practice what they preach. Nor they set an example to the leaders and teachers of tomorrow.
They don't teach their staff. My sister has not received an admissions letter although the electronic computer system shows she is accepted to the University of Cape Town. She is missing her compulsory University Orientation because she did not get the required documentation from UCT. She called and the lady at the admissions centre was rude to her. I heard my sister say the letter she needed hadn't arrived about 8 times. My sister knows she has been accepted because she can access the students admissions computer system.
Then after being told to wait for her admissions letter (UCT orientation has started already) she phoned the Humanities Department. They told her orientation had started and were not much help either. She was cut off so she phoned again and was shouted at for not being organised and at O-week. Nobody helped her or admitted that because she hadn't received the required documentation, it was UCT's fault. I studied a business course at UCT . There was place for me at the last minute because many of those accepted into the course didn't show up for registration. Many of those that did turn up, hadn't recieved acceptance letters either. How many UCT students don't hear they have a place and fail to come to University because of their acceptance letters not arriving? Yes UCT has electronic admissions status but only 2% of this country has access to the Internet.
Interestingly accounts showing what one money one owes always arrive. My sister has been sent a fee account but no acceptance letter for her course.
I was a Wits student last year. Registering to study was a nightmare. I then couldn't access the University for weeks because it took weeks before my student card was activated to allow me to park.
Friends of mine were billed for courses they had paid for. Wits has a reputation of having disastrous administration.
How can Universities be run in such a haphazard fashion and be filled with professors who know all about management, organisation, computer systems and leadership? They don't practice what they preach. Nor they set an example to the leaders and teachers of tomorrow.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Shark Attacks
It's funny how people believe bad things won't happen to them. And my grandfather thinks he is always right. This time he was.
On Monday I took my visiting grandparents to Fishoek beach to have coffee as the coffee shop is right on the beach. It has a beautiful view and no stairs for my almost 80-year-old-gran to mount. So while looking at the blustery sea, my grandfather mentions the shark attack a few years ago and the conversation turns to shark nets. I replied that we can't have shark nets here and Fishoek is safe - only one shark attack ever. I also explained that shark spotters are paid to stand on the mountains overlooking the bay and a siren sounds when the sharks come too close to swimmers. A flag system is used to warn about the danger of sharks or low visibility. I couldn't say then which flag meant what. But I argued with my grandfather that shark attacks were not a threat.
The very next day a Zimbabwean man was swimming at Fishoek beach in chest-high in water and was eaten by a shark. Eyewitnesses say the shark took a bite, swam away, and then turned around and swallowed him whole. It happened quickly with blood and a fin visible to most.
The 37 year old victim's wife was on the beach.
1) My immediate thought was that I wished I had been there and that I had missed the drama on Fishoek by a day. Then I felt like a blood-hungry journalist who didn't care that this was more than story. It was a tragedy. A youngish man enjoying a holiday swim in the middle of summer got eaten while his wife sat on the beach. It was almost movie-like.
2) The day after the attack was a perfect-windless summer day. Usually summer days are windy and unpleasant by the afternoon. But one day after the tragedy it was if the sea had been calmed in some sacifice to angry gods.
Due to the heat and flat beauty of a calm sea, my siblings and I wanted to swim. We drove above the beaches on Boyes drive and looked down longingly at the clean crisp ocean devoid of people. From the mountain, we could see perfect surfing waves and blue sea glistening in the hot sun. We moaned that we couldn't swim. The beaches were closed while authorities searched for the body of the shark attack. How selfish is human behavior? It is only fitting that we empty the beaches as some kind of mourning for a life so suddenly taken on a summer holiday day. Not to mention that finding the body was important. Yet we just thought about how we couldn't swim that day. His body has not been found a week later.
3) Four days after the attack my younger brother and our British visitor went surfing, unafraid of the shark that had eaten someone a few days before about ten kilometres away. If it takes four days to depersonalise the danger of the ocean, what does it take to keep people aware of the danger of HIV /AIDS and get them wearing a condom consistently? This is a valid question in South Africa where more than 5 million people are HIV positive? We think we are immortal or that we will all live till 80.
4) The day after the attack my hairdresser told us how he had learnt about it through twitter. One of the clients in the salon had a family member on the beach who twittered about it and soon the whole salon knew before radio news told them. All the news did was repeat what they knew. When is South African radio news going to add more to what citizen journalists already know?
Somebody died swimming. There are questions to answer. These are some of them:
Is shark cage diving contributing to the increase of shark attacks?
Do sharks now associate the smell of humans with food given to them when humans enter their undersea world?
Are sharks coming in looking for food because the seas are over-fished?
Are the shark spotters, that are funded by government and business, doing their job? If the shark sirens and flags are not intelligible to tourists and non-locals what is the point of paying spotters people to stand on the mountain and look for sharks? Perhaps their flags and sirens need a little interpretation so beach goers notice and understand them.
Or perhaps shark spotters, who can see little on an ordinary windy summer day, are not the answer to the increase of shark attacks in the bay. Nobody debated what the answer could be because the next day new news took over the airwaves.
On Monday I took my visiting grandparents to Fishoek beach to have coffee as the coffee shop is right on the beach. It has a beautiful view and no stairs for my almost 80-year-old-gran to mount. So while looking at the blustery sea, my grandfather mentions the shark attack a few years ago and the conversation turns to shark nets. I replied that we can't have shark nets here and Fishoek is safe - only one shark attack ever. I also explained that shark spotters are paid to stand on the mountains overlooking the bay and a siren sounds when the sharks come too close to swimmers. A flag system is used to warn about the danger of sharks or low visibility. I couldn't say then which flag meant what. But I argued with my grandfather that shark attacks were not a threat.
The very next day a Zimbabwean man was swimming at Fishoek beach in chest-high in water and was eaten by a shark. Eyewitnesses say the shark took a bite, swam away, and then turned around and swallowed him whole. It happened quickly with blood and a fin visible to most.
The 37 year old victim's wife was on the beach.
1) My immediate thought was that I wished I had been there and that I had missed the drama on Fishoek by a day. Then I felt like a blood-hungry journalist who didn't care that this was more than story. It was a tragedy. A youngish man enjoying a holiday swim in the middle of summer got eaten while his wife sat on the beach. It was almost movie-like.
2) The day after the attack was a perfect-windless summer day. Usually summer days are windy and unpleasant by the afternoon. But one day after the tragedy it was if the sea had been calmed in some sacifice to angry gods.
Due to the heat and flat beauty of a calm sea, my siblings and I wanted to swim. We drove above the beaches on Boyes drive and looked down longingly at the clean crisp ocean devoid of people. From the mountain, we could see perfect surfing waves and blue sea glistening in the hot sun. We moaned that we couldn't swim. The beaches were closed while authorities searched for the body of the shark attack. How selfish is human behavior? It is only fitting that we empty the beaches as some kind of mourning for a life so suddenly taken on a summer holiday day. Not to mention that finding the body was important. Yet we just thought about how we couldn't swim that day. His body has not been found a week later.
3) Four days after the attack my younger brother and our British visitor went surfing, unafraid of the shark that had eaten someone a few days before about ten kilometres away. If it takes four days to depersonalise the danger of the ocean, what does it take to keep people aware of the danger of HIV /AIDS and get them wearing a condom consistently? This is a valid question in South Africa where more than 5 million people are HIV positive? We think we are immortal or that we will all live till 80.
4) The day after the attack my hairdresser told us how he had learnt about it through twitter. One of the clients in the salon had a family member on the beach who twittered about it and soon the whole salon knew before radio news told them. All the news did was repeat what they knew. When is South African radio news going to add more to what citizen journalists already know?
Somebody died swimming. There are questions to answer. These are some of them:
Is shark cage diving contributing to the increase of shark attacks?
Do sharks now associate the smell of humans with food given to them when humans enter their undersea world?
Are sharks coming in looking for food because the seas are over-fished?
Are the shark spotters, that are funded by government and business, doing their job? If the shark sirens and flags are not intelligible to tourists and non-locals what is the point of paying spotters people to stand on the mountain and look for sharks? Perhaps their flags and sirens need a little interpretation so beach goers notice and understand them.
Or perhaps shark spotters, who can see little on an ordinary windy summer day, are not the answer to the increase of shark attacks in the bay. Nobody debated what the answer could be because the next day new news took over the airwaves.
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