The Team: Lunatics going in as everyone else bails

A decidedly poignant definition of what journalism is, I once came across during the somber aftermath of some natural disaster (hurricane Katrina, I think) that ravaged parts of the US. It went something along the line of “people going in when everyone else is getting out”. 

No doubt a phrase that encapsulates the footing of the media particularly in hostile war zones, disaster areas and crisis situations. Whilst everybody else is scrambling to vacate; to turn away from the carnage, leaving behind their homes, work, the twisted bodies, like dutiful soldiers the media are going in. 

Digging in their heels for the story, the pictures, the lead, the feature – anything to make that coveted “history’s first draft.” Putting their lives on the line as the lay of the land is naturally rigged with danger. Reporting on corruption or unscrupulous business people in our own SA is akin to harbouring an unspoken deathwish. 

Journalists sometimes disappear.

Whistleblowers are found swimming with the fishes. 

And anybody who threatens the wellbeing of the hardmen often winds up with a bullet between his eyes. 

Despite the dangers, we have outfits like Amabhungane still digging up the rot. Investigative journalists from Scorpio calling out the bureaucratic BS. This is, after all, the precarious fate that they signed up for. What the quest for truth looks like in real terms. No mangamanga business this where one day you’re asking the difficult questions and the next you’re being bundled up into the boot of a car and all you can do is hope there’s a God out there somewhere.

Retired teacher but clearly old habits die hard. Maeder “Mr Oz” Osler. Image: Facebook

So as the fourth estate encounters choppy waters, with many seasoned newshounds jumping ship, newsrooms bleeding reporters en masse or simply calling it a day and closing up venerable publications, one must indeed be mad to be going in while everybody else is getting out. To be braving the stormy waters just as everybody is sure you are doomed to only drown. Where half-hearted encouragement is murmured by people who have difficulty hiding just how stupid they think you are.

The media industry has been on a gradual, obvious slump over the years. Covid-19 only hastened the turning off of the critical life support. Investors have nervously balked, too scared to back up what was clearly a sinking ship and consumers were having a tough time surviving when jobs and businesses were going asunder and it was evidently only a matter of time before the apocalypse would come down hard on everybody.

In no time we saw trusted publications giving in. Revered names obliterated from the bylines. Great writers despondently taking up jobs as office hacks.  Drum  magazine ended its decades’ long print publication. Recently, The football magazine, Kick Off, was bidding their supporters farewell.  

Amid the bloodbath, eParkeni and Toverwiew were absurd enough to ignorantly believe that there was still something to be said of a community/rural media. That we could go at it if not for the profits but a sincere responsibility to those who are often forgotten and marginalised in these forgotten places where big (and small) media are too big for us anyway.  

Aha! Now we know what Janco Piek is getting up to when he’s not tending to our tech issues.

Think about it: If many media houses were sinking and most of the few that remained afloat were erecting paywalls, what hope was there for the man on the street? The blue-collar worker who has a right to be kept in the know. Who sits on his stoep after work and browses the internet trying to catch up on what the rest of the world was getting up to during his 8 to 4:30 slog. The things that affect him directly. That are happening right there in his own community. Who bemusedly scratches his head wondering what all these wind turbines on the surrounding farms are all about? What was the soccer score between Umso High School and that other team from Middelburg?

More than anything that is why eParkeni, Toverview and Hanglip blog came into being. An old man with nothing to prove felt we might be doing a disservice if we did not at least give it a go. His friend, a former trombonist with the African Jazz Pioneers did what natural born artists and musicians are prone to do: asked no questions and simply jumped right in. At almost half their age, it is not that our conversations are ever accompanied by any noteworthy excitement. Or that we are planning to survive off of this, let alone get rich. Nothing of the sort. They are rather dull, our conversations, introspective, the sort one might have with a cleric.

Still, what did we have to lose? 

It’s not like we’re walking around with reputations or egos to protect. In fact we have nothing but a genuine faith that this venture might someday prove beneficial to youngsters who otherwise feel there are no opportunities available to them. Who might feel there is nothing else out there when the schooling is done and nobody is responding to their job applications. 

Mbulelo Kafi was supposed to be gathering news, instead he found hanging out with N Cape Ms Heritage Month Anelisiwe Thibane, far more interesting

Some in the team are old education hands. Faithful disciples of the emancipating power of education and self-development. This is the common thread under which we are woven. The umbrella under which we have discovered a common purpose. No guarantees, of course, in these woebegone times. Certainly not of any great success or causing so much as a ripple in the broader local scheme of things. 

In the final analysis, though, we know there are stories – some so old that oral accounts cannot be relied upon for credible accounting. Of the deaths and struggles of former political activists. Stories that lie buried in the cemeteries or live on as fragmented inconsistencies on the ageing mouths who tell them. We hope to bring these to the eyes of the sort of people who can ensure that they are excavated, brushed clean and accurately presented to the world. The  right  eyes. Researchers, scholars, documentarists – the sort of eyes that see opportunity where everybody is shuddering pessimistically.

And so, Dear Reader, on this platform we trudge blindly in the spirit of a refusal to turn a blind eye to social injustice. To poverty. To kids who are collecting beer bottles and firewood when they should otherwise be at school. Young women whose bodies are violent scenes of desperation, exploitation and staying in rough relationships only ’cause where else are poor people to turn. The reality on the ground is brutal. It makes you want to turn away. To not see. But here we are going in regardless. Social workers do it everyday. So what’s our excuse? I certainly can’t think of one! So we’ll meet up in the chaos, the carnage, the sad stories that bring tears to the eyes of men who think they’ve seen it all….see you there. We’re going in….

The Frontline Brigade!

Before Phakamisa Mayaba took to writing, he was the annoying salesperson barging into random offices peddling anything from watches to teddy bears. Or serving your Martini – shaken but not stirred – in various bars and restaurants in Bloemfontein. Nowadays he’s a Communications grad, a student in education, father to Aze, Indi and Bonolo and lives in Colesberg with a nameless stray cat of undetermined breed. 

His lowly scribblings have appeared on  The Mail & Guardian , City Press ,  Diamond Fields Advertiser  and a host of small-time publications. Oh ja…he also has a few short stories on the magazines  Drum  and  You. Alongside a few journeymen, that meaning other unemployeds, they’re dawdling through the idea of a rural media vehicle. 

There’s an octogenarian sheep farmer whose occasional visits make for worthwhile smalltalk. An aged ex trombonist who sounds like he could still blow something unforgettable into that instrument yet. We’ll ask him to someday. And the nerve center of it all, a gentleman who wears hip beard too long for my liking. I would tell him off but it’s just that all I know of computers is how they continue to baffle me and he’s an expert around them. 

There is also a diminutive (don’t mention I said that) developmentalist and tour guide who is the go-to figure whenever tourists want to be shown around the Colesberg area. A venerable figure, well etched in the community.

Well, here we are manning the sites eParkeni.co.zaToverwiew.co.za and https://sakhisizwetours.com/ which aspire to cover backwater stories in the Karoo. Visit them and be a plattelander for a day… we’ll waltz you along. Now let us take you by the hand. Let’s go!

We work together, we play together

Editor’s Notes: Out of town, likely blowing his horn crazy in some dingy downtown Jo’burg jazz club, we couldn’t get a picture of our 80-something year old trombonist. But we did get his voicemail. Something about not calling him, he’d call us.

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