Pounding the pavements...and getting an earful!

Latest blog on the lighter side of covering the Naija community on Biccard Street for a class project... here.

THE POWER OF THE AUDIO SLIDESHOW

This is a format that hasn't really caught on in Nigeria, but I earnestly hope it will.

Specifically, the power of the audio slideshow in telling certain stories is one way to humanize your stories and ensure it strikes a deeper level of consciousness with the audience. Against a drawback of sorts where text can only describe the circumstances from the eyes of the reporter, the audio slideshow fuses sound and images to allow the viewer make up their impressions of the situation being reported.

The website www.mediastorm.org helps independent journalists tell their stories in the audio slideshow format. One could at least get inspiration from here, but this clip called THE NINTH FLOOR which chronicles years in the lives of drug addicts left me in awe of the power of the audio slideshow and unable to eat...

My gruelling Online Journalism Class at Wits...

My Online Journalism class means I must blog daily, and report on an immigrant community in Johannesburg and upload my er..efforts onto a specialised website. Please find so-called efforts on the link HERE.

Father sowed, Wits waters....

Just so you understand where I am coming from, I am a journalist, whose father was a journalist, and killed for being a journalist.

Father always loudly proclaimed that none of his children would be journalists. Journalists were “poor people whose riches could change the world but not buy them the good things therein.” Yet, Father would diligently go to work daily and come back with stories that he recounted to us, unwittingly sowing the seeds that found me at Wits—and help me make sense of this life-changiing experience.

For someone who didn't want a journalist for a child, he spent too much time dwelling on the subject; encouraging me at six year of age to spot mistakes in newspapers and give a recap of the news if he came home late.

His particular fixation was about “two young men in South Africa” who were giving the apartheid government a tough time using their paper called the Weekly Mail. These young men were not only handsome, Father said with glee, they were also the first to use computers! I was old enough to recall why that was wonderous to Father; the papers in Nigeria were still manually assembled, the typewriters still very much a feature.

Years later, my work as a journalist would find me suddenly at Wits, in a department headed by Anton Harber, one of the handsome journalists father went on about. I discovered Anton was no longer young of course. Now a professor, his “handsomeness” could safely be said to be relative to whoever was looking. But he still had the same curly hair which housed all the magic powers he frequently employed to escape from the clutches of apartheid policemen. I know the part about the hair is true because Father said so.

Growing up, all our homes were littered with pages of newspapers, a habit that has found its way into my tiny room at International House. There was Time, there were the local dailies, and random pages, some of which had the word “Drum” written on it. These in particular were really old, and anytime I asked Father where the rest of this magazine was, he would get visibly angry and curse the one great move the family had made from the Niger-Delta to Lagos, in search of economic fortune. The distance had somehow ensured the fragile pages never made it home in one piece.
It took coming to Wits to see why Father was greatly attached to those particular pages.

Professor Harber takes this course where we are given tons of reading and encouraged to debate on them weekly to help us make sense of the theories, histories and trends that shape global journalism as we know it today. I thought it sucked at first...until I opened the pages. It was through this class I discovered that Drum Magazine was a cultural icon that created the earliest cracks in the stronghold of apartheid the way only journalism could. Further personal research showed why Father was always close to tears at the sight of a weathered Drum page; Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka said in 1988 that the “average Nigerian reader” of the mid-1950s “was weaned on Drum”.
It wasn't all about South Africa. I have read short stories by Cyprian Ekwensi in Drum, published in 1953, the year of Father's birth. A 1958 feature on the Egungun festival has a black and white picture of a child masquerade holding a tapering cane and flanked by six other naked children staring in awe. There is also the 1964 epic, “The Mystery of the Bodiless Head” a story situated in Ibadan on what was likely the beginnings of ritual killings.

Had it not been for Wits, I would have quickly thought Father was merely being too sentimental or senile in his 40s, or something.
As though that wasn't enough, last week Tuesday, I met the other handsome young man who founded the Weekly Mail with Professor Harber; Irwin Manoim.
Mr. Manoim was also not young. He had no hair at all, but thankfully, none of that had anything to do with his world-class skills as a journalist and newspaper designer. His class in newspaper design left me wishing I could call up Father to show off and gloat.

Instead, I made do with taking a picture with Mr. Manoim so my kids don't call me an old fart when I in turn start blabbing about journalists and journalism.

Father sowed the seeds. And Wits Journalism waters it adequately. Thank you, Wits.

**IMAGE BY www.sahistory.co.za

*Agbroko is the 2010 Niall Fitzgerald scholar doing her Honours degree in Journalism and Media Studies at the University of the Witswatersrand (Wits), Johanneburg, South Africa. She writes this column for www.vuvuzela.org.za, the website for Wits' journalism department.

A Tale of two Amnesties

By RUONA AGBROKO

I had the most horrible day—to put it as freshmen do—LIKE , EVER, on Tuesday last week and therefore gave in to my inner wimp. I concentrated my efforts on crying my way through Rosebank Mall and all the way back to Wits. Half way through rebuffing the sexual overtures of a middle-aged man, (who claimed he was offering sympathy) a text message came through on my phone. I skimmed through and burst out laughing, laughing so hard the tears flowed more! Mr. Pot-bellied-Pervert ran off in the direction of Truworths, obviously certain I was insane.

 
 The comic relief came from shock, horror, the SAPS (South African Police Service). And its text message read thus:
“SAPS urges SA citizens to voluntarily had in all illegal firearms before April 11...”

I had been blown away by the campaign itself, which started on January 11 and ends in five days. The SAPS was melting 80,611 guns just four days into the programme. The weapons included obsolete police weapons and guns previously recovered by police from crime scenes. All of which was reminiscent of the Niger-Delta amnesty in Nigeria. That was to encourage militants to drop their weapons as well as their line of business instead of blowing up oil installations and kidnapping innocent staff of exploration firms.
 
About 20,100 ex-militants accepted the presidential offer of amnesty, which expired on October 4 last year. Nigeria’s acting president has reportedly approved N56.2bn for the official luring of able-bodied young men away from the temptations of armed revolution.

But I digress.

Why was I laughing at The Mall of Rosebank? Simply because SAPS had unwittingly provided a leeway for the misconstruing of its message at a time when it nears its end. Why urge only SA citizens to drop their weapons, when they aren’t likely going to be the only ones in possession of illegal arms?

 
I asked a classmate and lecturer what they thought. They were of the opinion that it was most likely a slip in communication. But it is a dangerous one, in retrospect.
Picture a foreigner in court, post April-11, saying “I had no idea what to do with my unwanted firearm because the message I read said only SA citizens were allowed to drop off unwanted licensed as well as licensed firearms.” If there’s any justice in the world, he or she will walk.

But maybe it is just the wannabe-journalist in me kicking up dust, after all, these slips in official communication happen everywhere and the world hasn’t stopped.
 

Case in point: the anecdotal story of a Police PR mishap where an ‘r’ was omitted and the payoff/message to the Nigerian public became “The Police is your fiend” not fRiend.


*Agbroko is the 2010 Niall Fitzgerald scholar doing her Honours degree in Journalism and Media Studies at the University of the Witswatersrand (Wits), Johanneburg, South Africa. She writes this column for www.vuvuzela.org.za, the website for Wits' journalism department.

Soft porn in the name of love...

By Ruona Agbroko
Monday 29, March 2010

No, the inspiration for this piece is not the fact that I have no significant other and have consistently failed in my duty as a child to bring home a “young, Christian boy” to pay my tribal lobola of less than R3 to Mother. This article merely seeks to understand the phenomenon whereby any random gust of cool wind, some well-trimmed grass and open space (or any three) is a license for Witsies to commence mild acts of pornography.


I must daily walk the distance from International House through the Matrix, past the Library Lawn and towards my department or outside of Wits. On each trip, I am regularly confronted by couples in various stages of foreplay—ok, “snogging”. There will be the chance that once I shift my gaze to give a guy distributing saliva all over a girl’s nose some privacy, that gaze will fall on the vision of someone else’s face buried between the mammary glands of another.



Being nothing of a voyeur, I again avert my eyes and just as I look to the serenity of manicured lawns to gather my creative thoughts for the day...BAM! That attempt is foiled by the sheer numbers of couples basking in the sun, entwined in various poses that could easily illustrate articles in sex manuals and relationship magazines.



Don’t get me wrong. I am all for holding hands, sharing the odd necessary cuddle and dropping a random kiss on a bared shoulder, but there seems to be no boundaries for the grosser acts of intimacy. I have been on registration queues at the Senate House and had to endure the pre-orgasmic face of a fresher whose boyfriend had her facing me just so he could keep biting her neck.

I have also been at a checkout counter in a store and had my time wasted just because a couple thought it was romantic to caress each other’s nether regions through the pockets under the guise of looking for small change. Vomit. Copiously.



Even worse, I have watched with dismay as a mother instinctively spread a palm over her child’s face on a Sunday afternoon to stop the little girl from having her innocence ruined by the sight of two humans rolling in the grass at West Campus Village as they kissed—no, make that osculated—the life out of each other.



I am willing to concede that I may be biased. Maybe I am this way because of the conservative approach to a public display of intimacy that Nigeria has. In fact, I have often rebelled against the hypocritical bent of this approach, and applaud public displays of attention (PDAs). I have always been the girl sighing and endlessly recounting “how romantic that was” etc.

But I must now call a spade a spade, not a farming implement.

With due respect to the understandable headiness/freedom that campus brings and the inclination to explore life in much the same way everyone else is doing, I do feel commonsense should prevail.

It is terribly anti-social to disrespect the sensibilities of others when trying to prove you love someone else, especially given that PDAs can’t possibly be okay in every given situation.



Yes, it is much impressive to be gross in public and show the rest of the class that you are meant for each other. Yes, yes you are right... it’s cheaper, as well as your right to spread a blanket in front of West Campus Village and throw in some fare from The Matrix rather than to go out to a restaurant and book a room, but with intimacy should come responsibility. And respect. For both yourselves, and the people who must share the same academic spaces with you. End of.

*Agbroko is the 2010 Niall Fitzgerald scholar doing her Honours degree in Journalism at the University of the Witswatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, South Africa. She writes this column for www.vuvuzela.org.za, the website for Wits' Journalism department.

Feature blog on Nigeria

WARNING: THIS HYPERLINK LEADS TO A GRAPHIC PICTURE:

http://i.imagehost.org/0088/for-jos-main.jpg

She looks like a burnt rubber doll, right? Her cornrows roasted to a crisp, torso rent from limbs, face melded into the smouldering ashes. They say she was not yet six.

I refused to believe she wasn’t a doll. I refused to believe those were her intestines sticking out from her side.

But the news tells me she was a Nigerian, just like me. Only she happened to live in one of several villages where a sectarian crisis occurred.

This is the most gripping of several pictures that have shocked the world in the past week and made me question my existence as a Nigerian.


On Sunday March 7 a crowd of men stormed Dogo Nahawa, Zot and Rassat villages in Jos, Plateau State, about three kilometers from Abuja, the capital. Reports state that they burnt about 75 houses and killed some 500 Christians; mainly women, children and the elderly. The victims’ chances were marred by the surprise of sleep, the weakness of age and the viciousness of their attackers.



The corpses of children and adults testify that people broke into their homes and dragged sickles through their jaws, from side to side.

There were mothers who were shredded with machetes as they tried to protect the same children the murderers flung into purpose-built fires. Some 3, 000 people have fled the State, and are now destitute.


The latest horror finds grim company; ethnic and religious clashes have occurred in Jos in 1994, 2001, 2004, 2008 and as recently as January. It also comes at a time when Nigeria’s president Umaru Yar’adua has not been seen or heard from for 113 days and the country grapples with a leadership crisis, food prices and fuel scarcity.


The sordid joke in some quarters is that the sign-off phrase used by international media that “one-third of all Nigerians live on less than a dollar a day” may have to be reviewed downwards. Indeed, last Sunday’s riots proved to be the tipping scale worldwide.

Images of weeping children, bodies laid in rows for a mass burial and the words of spluttering officials were relayed by news websites and social networking sites. Nigerians living abroad once again became scavengers, fingers hovering over laptops and mobile phone keypads, all waiting to feed off the latest report. We were not alone. The fixation of news wires and daytime satellite TV shifted.



A statement by United States Ambassador to Nigeria read in part: “The death and destruction is horrific… the underlying issues – economic challenges, ethnic tensions, and the need for improved state leadership on the issue – that continue to spark these continuous incidents of violence need to be addressed in a comprehensive manner with the goal of ending the cycle of sectarian conflicts.



Lawmakers from the region on Wednesday March 10 cited the N65 billion (about R3.4 billion) amnesty /rehabilitation program for militants in the oil-rich Niger Delta and sought a similar ‘economic package’ for Plateau State.

“We are not saying there is no religious undertone, but if someone has a job that closes in the evening, he will have no time to take part in a riot at night,” the lawmakers’ spokesperson said.

News also emerged that there had been attempts by men from Jos to mop-up leftover arms from the Niger Delta just weeks before the killings.



As the governor of Plateau State and religious leaders blamed army chiefs for ignoring warnings of possible attacks, the military commander in the State admitted he had received messages but implied he could not act on them because they were not official.



"I want to make it categorically clear that no official from Plateau State Government called me or forwarded a text message to me. But they all have my numbers," he was quoted as saying.



Meanwhile, the police also paraded 49 suspects, most from a single ethnic group. Lawmakers sped up legislation to ensure youths were not posted to Plateau for the nations compulsory service year for graduates.


Apart from imposing a curfew, the governor also announced a three-day fasting programme to “pray and cry out to God for the forgiveness of our sins, and to plead with him to bring peace on the Plateau and our dear nation, Nigeria.”

Fortunately, the majority of Nigerians who do not recognize their country anymore have decided to do something more practical about it.



On Thursday March 11, hundreds of women from Plateau state were in Abuja, protesting and seeking justice over the death of the 500 lives lost.



The next day, the Save Nigeria Group protests took place, with CNN’s Christian Purefoy reporting from the ranks of sweating but resolute ordinary Nigerians chanting in the mid-day sun.



Tomorrow, it will be the turn of Nigeria’s youths to hit the tarred roads of the national assembly in Abuja, the nation’s capital, to protest the lack of roads nationwide.

We will be asking only three things. That our President resumes office, resigns or is removed before month’s end.

That the government fulfills its earlier promise of providing 6000 megawatts of electricity by December 2009.

That the paradox of being Africa’s largest oil producer, while suffering perennial petrol price hikes and scarcity ends. All three will do.

We have the benefit of numbers on our side; over 60 percent of Nigerians are aged 35 and below.

We have the tools of justified anger, frustration and the internet in our hands.

Most importantly, we have the awareness that we must begin to move collectively from Facebook rage to sending clear signals of dissent to all who have gained political and economic clout from our apathy.



The Nigerian anthem says “the labour of our heroes past/shall never be in vain”. If that didn’t move us all this time, then the present killing of our children by the sword and the continued slaying of our future by a few politicians has obviously proven sufficient.



--Get an overview of plans by young Nigerians on tomorrow’s protest to the National Assembly, Abuja at http://whereisyaradua.com/




--Get updates on social and government efforts on the Jos crisis here:

http://joskillings.blogspot.com/



--See pictures of the Jos killings here: BE WARNED…THEY ARE GRAPHIC. http://www.anglicandioceseofjos.org/dogo.html


*Agbroko is the 2010 Niall Fitzgerald scholar doing her Honours degree in Journalism and Media Studies at the University of the Witswatersrand (Wits), Johanneburg, South Africa. She writes this column for www.vuvuzela.org.za, the website for Wits' journalism department.

The strange case of Ruona Agbroko

Written by Ruona Agbroko
Monday, 08 March 2010 10:27
Lesley. Anton. Margaret. Franz....Lesley. Anton. Margaret. Franz. Lesley...
I would stand in front of the full-length mirror in my hotel room in Sandton and chant these names repeatedly for days before I resumed classes at Wits. Even my reflection thought I had gone bonkers. Still, months later, I struggle with the strangeness of having to call my lecturers by name.


Back home in Nigeria, we would ask around, from fellow students or check door labels for the proper title of a lecturer before daring to see him/her.


Woe betide you if you called a professor a doctor, or said “Mrs” instead of “Doctor Mrs.”


Often you got sent out without being heard, or had to endure a lecture on when the lecturer in question came about their doctorate. Some of us paid for our 'mistake' by having to keep a straight face during long-winded tales of how lecturers' parents toiled, how they went to the UK or some other foreign country to school in the 60s, and how our parents hadn't even met then, much less given a thought to conceiving us; mere tadpoles now endowed with sufficient guts to call them by a lesser title.

Fast-forward to Wits, and I found myself asking Margaret on orientation day; “Please...are you a doctor or...?”


“What has that got to do with anything?” her twinkling eyes stared back, amused.

“I just needed to know what to call you, as...”

“Oh, forget that! Call me Margaret,” she burst out laughing.

All of which was followed by Lesley telling me nicely to stop calling her 'Ma'am' a few minutes later.

There's more.

I am not sure the origins of this practice, but anytime you saw a lecturer, you were to run over, curtsey or bow, as normal in greeting, and take their bags.

Being the oddball that I am, I only helped lecturers who were either nice, or really had too much to carry.

Fast-forward to Wits, and Barbara, my sub-editing lecturer must have thought I wanted to mug her when I instinctively reached for one of her bags.
When I offer to help her share stuff around the class so she doesn't have to zig-zag her way through the length of the room, she nicely says it's a form of exercise. It doesn't stop me asking her the very next time.
Because it is what it is.

For all my cosmopolitan-ness, I dare not call my parents by name, and only do so when I write about them, or behind their back, often when they have not fulfilled their role as life-long ATMs.
The same goes for relatives, regardless of whether you can locate their place on the family chain or not.

I think all of that forms the colourful fabric of being African.
I still find myself curtseying as I greet, I am still amazed that we can email our lecturers with tidbits and details of our coursework. Still tense when I have to knock on a lecturer's door, chat with them or yes...have to call them by name.


Which is why the small mirror in my narrow room at International House must still put up with a daily image of me, toothbrush in hand, hair tied back, chanting; “Lesley. Anton. Margaret. Franz....Lesley. Anton. Margaret. Franz. Lesley...”



*Agbroko is the 2010 Niall Fitzgerald scholar doing her Honours degree in Journalism and Media Studies at the University of the Witswatersrand (Wits), Johanneburg, South Africa. She writes this column for www.vuvuzela.org.za, the website for Wits' journalism department.

“Hey, where's the coloured girl in your class?”

Written by Ruona Agbroko
Monday, 01 March 2010 08:48

A few weeks into life at Wits and it's common knowledge that freshmen are always the ones who repeatedly apologise before asking for directions to places they are standing right in front of. They are also easily identified by their love for neon colours and all things gaudy, which is okay, once your eyes—and ears—get used to the vast amounts of clanging bling.
But there is another type of profiling I got an impromptu insight on; people referring to others by their skin colour.


The journalism department has this nice, cozy newsroom lab where its students converge. The interns strut about like they own the place, while the new students often forget the whole lab is Wits property—you wade through bags, bottles and wrappers to log on to a computer and out pops a Facebook page with a half-dressed male smiling at you.


Anyway, so there I was sitting in the lab, shooting off emails sufficiently buttered up to make my mates in Nigeria jealous when a boisterous voice rose above the din of students basking in the few minutes between lectures.

“Hey, where's the coloured girl in your class?”

I felt a gasp escape me before I could stop it. I turned my head and opened my mouth to speak then shut it fast, after remembering my mother's warning at the airport.


“Ruona, you really should try and mind your business when you get to South Africa. It is not everything you can change by being a journalist,” she had said, before suffocating me in a Chanel No. 5 goodbye hug.


I waited. Perhaps I hadn't heard those words. Maybe one of the voices in my head was being silly, surely?

Just as I returned to telling my friends about my imaginary campus boyfriend, the voice came again; “Guys, where's the coloured girl in your class?”


It finally occurred to me that Mother is not omnipresent.

I got up, and approached the speaker.

“I'm sorry, but…did you just refer to someone by their colour?”

“Yes,” she said, and then started chuckling.
“You should see your face...is it an issue in Nigeria? That's how it goes down here, girl.”

“I'm sorry, I find that hard to believe...aren't you a journalist? Why not get her name, or ask; 'where is the lady who sat next to you', or something?
“How would you feel if someone referred to you based on your colour?” I threw in for good measure.

By this time, I was following her around.

“Look, Ruona, we are a rainbow nation. I wouldn't feel bad... I'd feel worse if someone called me a Kaffir, which is really major here, people don't see anything wrong with being referred to by their colour, as opposed to being called a Kaffir. Then, they’d get really mad.”

“Okay, I have no way of confirming that people like being called black, white or coloured,” I conceded.

“But surely you must know that even if they liked it, rainbow nation or not...it just isn’t proper. You could get sued, or come under serious criticism if you did this elsewhere, you know, right?”


“Well, yeah...I guess I won't refer to people by their colour when I get outside, then,” she shrugged.

“Aha!” I replied.

“If you see the need not to do this elsewhere, why not stop doing it now? Must you wait until you get to another country?”


She was silent. I was pleased.
Winning an argument holds the same level of excitement for me as Marie Curie must have had winning the Nobel Prize.


By now we were back where it all started, in the lab. I asked another student if South Africans all referred to each other by their colour.


She shook her head.
“No. It all depends on who is talking to who…it's not like it's something that everyone does.”



I heaved a sigh of relief and turned to the girl who had been referred to as “coloured” in her absence.


“How would you feel if you were called coloured to your face?”


She shrugged; “It happens, because South Africa has had a history with race and all of that…there were books to literally tell you what colour you were and even now, it's all we're reminded of. In school application forms, bank account opening forms, name it...they ask if you are black, Indian, white, etc.
“They keep rubbing it in your face so I guess it'll always be there”, she finished.


“Do you get that outside?” I asked.


“Not really”, she replied.
“When I was in America they would say; 'please call the girl with a weave downstairs', then you knew it had to be a black person, for whoever it was to wear a weave, or cornrows...they'd have to be black. They are more careful. It's also the way they may say “nigger” in some places there but not say it in like, Seattle.”


“Would you refer to someone by their colour inside or outside your country?”
“No, I would not,” she replied.



“But Ruonah, here it's not like......” the person who brought about the whole debate still had a few more words.


I interrupted her with a joke. I’d had my fill.
Mother did say it is a smart person who remembers his stomach's constitution and knows what foods to select at a buffet.


As I negotiate the “buffet” that is my time in South Africa, I daresay I can live with the fact that freshmen are known by their love of neon colours, but vehemently refuse to accept the (hopefully unpopular) view that being in a country of diverse people, or having a history of racial profiling gives anyone the right to identify humans by their skin colour.

http://vuvuzela.org.za/index.php/wits-voices-a-views/540-hey-wheres-the-coloured-girl-in-your-class

*Agbroko is the 2010 Niall Fitzgerald scholar doing her Honours degree in Journalism and Media Studies at the University of the Witswatersrand (Wits), Johanneburg, South Africa. She writes this column for www.vuvuzela.org.za, the website for Wits' journalism department.

Complacence ain't hip!

By Ruona Agbroko
Sunday, 21 February 2010 07:31


I haven’t ever listened to my lecturers entirely. This is why instead of working out complex Chemistry equations for my first degree, I was on the streets, gathering stories.

This is also why I took Anton Harber’s advice to “take all you hear from the authorities with a pinch of salt.” Unfortunately, he was the authority, and speaking during the journalism department's reception for new students.

For those who don’t know, Professor Harber heads the Journalism School at Wits and has this thick, curly mop of hair; the kind that begs to be accessorized by a halo.
Kind squinting eyes peering from behind rimless glasses complete the look. But that’s where any semblance with the angelic ends.

Professor Harber says the scariest things, and—wait for it—actually smiles while doing so.

He was at his gremlin best at the event, telling us before our parents to; “get some sleep, because the next months will be spent working hard.” He went on to add, (with the requisite smile in place) that “if you think this is going to be a walk in the park, I suggest you take up easier courses like Medicine, Engineering...”

Underneath the hearty laughter of the evening’s distinguished guests lay the mirthless laughter of the subjects of the discussion.

In fact, a walk across the room thereafter meant Professor Harber had succeeded in scaring most of us. Said a career-entry student: “Oh dear...I guess I really do have to call it a day...goodnight.”

One by one, they left.

Not me. I took Harber’s words with a pinch of salt and headed to The PiG, the postgraduate club nearby.

And it was there, all credit to the twin spirits called Disobedience and Heineken that I gained added insight into Africa’s discontent with reportage on it by “foreign media.”

No, I'm not drunk.

It started like this.

Someone asked what I found fascinating about South Africa.

“The women’s hips”, I replied, without missing a beat.

My five companions all burst out laughing. I explained that as one challenged in that regard, the amazing way in which the smallest of waists sat gingerly atop the largest of hips had my mouth wide open regularly. Think of a UK size 8 waist fanning out into size 20 hips, or for those not conversant with fashion, think of a baby-faced woman whose upper body is like a grain of rice and the lower half like a watermelon.

Those who could relate were all foreigners, so I turned to the South African sitting next to me and asked what she thought. She shrugged; “...can’t say I have actively noticed it. Maybe it’s because I am used to it.”

Minutes later, as I locked lips with my best friend Heineken, another pretty and hip-endowed female walked past. The others didn’t so much as spare a glance.

As someone else switched to another topic, I scanned through my phone and read the following comment on a journalist’s Facebook page; “We in the Nigerian media are dropping the ball again. We have forgotten that there is a fuel crisis...”

That’s when it hit me.

I made a big deal of South African female hips because it was new to me, as a foreigner. But the others were used to it, complacent since it was always in their face.

It is the same with reporting and journalists. Someone replied to that Facebook post, saying “Amnesia Nigeriana” was responsible. I call it complacence, and daresay it isn’t restricted to Nigerian journalists and the news organizations they work for.

Right now it is apparent that many become so “used to” occurrences and then don’t think some things are an issue, or we think too much of an issue has been made of something. It is a condition that weakens the ordinary citizen, and is debilitating to any journalist and news organization.

We only pause to express hypocritical shock when some “foreign” media body looks at the same issues with fresh eyes, or rehashes them at crucial times when they have more impact. The word foreign is now quoted because this is not a Western Vs African media thing alone. Even within countries and towns, journalists occasionally hide their complacence under the blanket of patriotism by playing up the tribal, ethnic, and national or continental card against the ‘enemy’.

It isn’t enough to say foreign media produce malicious reports and leave it at that, even if they do so. The lesson for journalists and the media I think is to continue (or if necessary STRUGGLE) to see our surrounding social, economical and political spaces with new eyes when reporting.

No journalist should ever “get used to” their immediate surroundings, or anywhere else, I think.

I’m not sure who to blame for this inspiring nugget of wisdom; my disobedience of lecturers’ orders, the beer, or the luscious female South African hips.

All I know is complacence ain't hip—all pun intended.



*Agbroko is the 2010 Niall Fitzgerald scholar doing her Honours degree in Journalism and Media Studies at the University of the Witswatersrand (Wits), Johanneburg, South Africa. She writes this column for www.vuvuzela.org.za, the website for Wits' journalism department.

Not just a statistic

By Ruona Agbroko
Sunday, 14 February 2010 21:08

The only reason I had some recollection of the Wits journalism department’s Justice Project flier was because a sexy looking boy (who I now discover is an unrepentant snob) had one in his hand on orientation day. But all that changed on the afternoon of February 2.


Today I know that “a third of the South African prison population is locked up awaiting trial, many for years. Yet approximately 2 in 5 of these people will eventually be acquitted.”

I know that this—not advertising rhetoric—is the reason Wits law and journalism students work under The Justice Project to investigate cases of people held in prison without trial and those wrongly convicted.

Today I know that these are not just statistics; the realities of human lives make up these numbers.

Why do I know all of this, now? Because a prisoner called me.

Part of the stipulations of my scholarship is that I put in some hours at the department’s administrative office. No day is ever the same, but all are enjoyable, mainly because I have a funky boss I shall call J.


So that Tuesday, I was in the office, trying to study. I however spent more time tolerating irritating calls from students who were somewhat allergic to checking the website or notice boards for where and when their own classes would hold.

And so, after a female trying to sound like Barry White had called in with her allergy, the telephone rang again even before I could make contact with my seat. I almost didn’t take that call.

“Hello, Wits Journalism...” I said, after the brief battle for my soul had been won by Professionalism.

This person continued breathing heavily.

I waited, in case the connection was afflicted by that scientific phenomenon where you speak and have to go to the grocers and back before the person on the other end hears what you have said.


Sure enough, he replied.

“Please I am calling from the prison.”


I almost dropped the receiver.


“How may I help you sir?” I managed to say.

“I believe I am on to the Justice Project... please I need the postal address to your department.”


I told him I had no idea, I was just an office assistant and...

He cut me off in mid-sentence.

“Please, understand I am calling from a prison. I do not know if I will have this opportunity again... Do you understand?”

I told him yes. Because I did.

My mother has worked with the Nigerian Prisons Service for over 30 years. I have visited the various prisons in the country where she worked as her child and only go now as a journalist, undercover, without her knowledge.


The conditions have improved, but they are still far from acceptable. The figures are as dismal as South Africa’s; government officials in 2009 said of 47,815 inmates unevenly spread across Nigeria’s 227 prisons, 80 percent await trial.



There are children living with prisoner-mothers, men detained for between five and ten years, sometimes more. Occasional aid during prison terms and rehabilitation after release are often the responsibility of religious and humanitarian organizations.



Local newspaper reports in Nigeria quote authorities as saying these organizations have helped reduce prisoner death rates to about 89 from 1,500 every year. Inside, there are no phones, and certainly no Justice Project-like initiative that I know of.



Investigating a story about preferential treatment for celebrity prisoners in December 2009, the spokesperson for all prisons in Nigeria’s Lagos State barked at us; “I have 4,500 inmates here; 80 per cent of who are awaiting trials, we are not happy with that. Instead of focusing on one person, let us talk about how we can decongest the prison.”


But because I know first-hand that focusing on one person instead of allowing all prisoners suffer injustice under the tag “criminals” makes the difference to penal systems, I used my free arm to make a mess of the office until I was reading out a postal address from some official letter to that faceless prisoner.


I hope he gets his day in court.


*Agbroko is the 2010 Niall Fitzgerald scholar doing her Honours degree in Journalism and Media Studies at the University of the Witswatersrand (Wits), Johanneburg, South Africa. She writes this column for www.vuvuzela.org.za, the website for Wits' journalism department.

***PHOTO CREDIT: policelink.monster.com

“You’ll know Wits when you see it”

By Ruona Agbroko
Monday, 08 February 2010 10:21

Well before I knew that passers-by here (in South Africa) often describe five-kilometre walks with the words “it isn’t far...turn at the third robot and walk straight...”, I asked this middle-aged man clutching a big Bible at Ghandi Square which way it was to Wits’ Braamfontein campus.

It wasn’t the Bible that made me feel he would know. It was the amusing fact that the fingers of his other hand were home to a half-smoked Stuyvesant.

“Where are you coming from?” he asked. Like that mattered more than where I was going.
I explained that I lived in Sandton, and was running late for my first day of registration at Wits.

“What country are you from,” he replied instead.

I stifled the urge to utter a swear-word at no one in particular. You see, my mum in Nigeria wouldn’t approve.

At last he prescribed the usual number of robots, graciously threw in some street names and even called me ‘baby’ for effect.

Our conversation was stunted by our respective accents, and the only thing I came away with was; “You’ll know Wits when you see it....you can’t miss it!”

How right he was.

It wasn’t the big signs, period facades or the large numbers of people dressed in neon colours that made me really “know” when I got to Wits.

It was a gay couple sitting on some bench, holding hands and talking intimately, as the rest of the school milled past.

I could have hugged them, only it would’ve been rude to invade their privacy. I hadn’t yet explored the rest of the school, but instinct told me this was a place where being a student didn’t mean you’d have to sacrifice your individuality.

I would later confirm that there were associations actively celebrating and strengthening social cohesion along national, social and religious divides.

It was with glee I noted the array of sports clubs, never mind that I wouldn’t be joining any. All of this paled when I came across the independence and delightful irreverence of Vuvuzela. All of this I guessed I would encounter in the few seconds I gawked at this gay couple.

But you really can’t blame me. Here, the Student Representative Committee looks out for students, even sitting in on committees to plead the case of some with poor academic performance. In my last years at the Nigerian university where I studied Microbiology, dress codes had been issued for ALL students.

The Student Union had been scrapped totally, with all students evicted from residence by police using tear-gas when SOME destroyed property during a demonstration against a major hike in accommodation fees.

In a country where being gay is punishable with imprisonment and stigmatisation, you can imagine how liberating it was to see this couple.

And so, brimming with excitement at making registration on time as well as with the prospect of being a Witsie, I turned to the couple—as any fellow Witsie should—and said; “Hi, guys! Lovely day isn’t it?”

The handsome one with the asymmetric –cut blonde hair took his mouth off his partner’s head to reply; “Fuck off, will ya?”

I considered the statement for a nanosecond with my head tilted to one side, brows furrowed in concentration.

I concluded it had to be campus-speak for; “Shouldn’t you run along now, newbie?”

Feeling a smile break out over my face, I turned in the opposite direction.

And gladly proceeded to fuck off.



*Agbroko is the 2010 Niall Fitzgerald scholar doing her Honours degree in Journalism and Media Studies at the University of the Witswatersrand (Wits), Johanneburg, South Africa. She writes this column for www.vuvuzela.org.za, the website for Wits' journalism department.