Public safety

 The Department

Of Community Safety, Tshwane Metro Police and Disaster management In Tshwane held a public safety meeting in Mabopane indoor sports centre on Thursday, February 24 regarding safety issues affecting the communities.

The speech was delivered by the Member of the Mayoral Committee (MMC) in Tshwane Ms Dikeledi Lehobye.

 The main aim was to create awareness to the Public especially with problems of drug dealing in the communities and crime.

Ms Dikeledi said “Mabopane is known as the popular area with the crime of smoking drug Nyaope.”

The project also aims at reaching out to schools; educate pupil, teachers and parents concerning safety.

Some of the grievances that were raised by the community members are: “Let us beat these criminals at their own game and be organised like they are and form policing forum and street committees”. “The law enforcement agencies (SAPS) and metro police should patrol the M17 road” “The Department should assist to do grass cutting in the bushes where school children cross.

 Mr Sipho Maphanga Sector-3 secretary in Mabopane said “I am concerned with the relationship between the members of the community and the Community Policing Forum, that they do not have a mutual relationship and that there are no meetings from the CPF addressing the public about issues affecting them.”

 “The community together with the law enforcement agency SAPS and Metro police should report any activity of crime to the department of public safety. You can remain anonymous if you want. Together we can fight safety in our communities and ensure that we are a drug free society.” said Ms Dikeledi.”

Housing Development

The community of Winterveld is benefiting from the Gamont Housing the Nation project. According to Mr Lucas Mdluli the project for this community was started in 1998 by Shadrack Dlamini together with the Tshwane Metro Municipality, before he passed away in 2009. “The main focus of the project is to help those who cannot afford to build their own houses and not working but surviving from social grants,” says Mr Lucas Mdluli, ward12 councillor in Winterveld.

Some members of the community are not happy with the way the project is operating, “what makes me angry mostly is the fact that people working at Gamont give more preference to people from outside this community and often neglect us who are living here, they just tell us to come after 3months to check our houses and at times they say we have to go to Johannesburg head offices with regards to our queries. I fear that the houses could fall anytime and one day they could find corpses,” said one resident who did not want to be identified for fear of victimisation.

A 89-year-old man residing in the same area by the name of Mr Kumalo Solomon who is a flood victim says:”I did not get any help from this project, my wife applied for a house before she passed away and was told to come and check the house after two weeks, they then told me on the day of appointment that they do not issue houses to dead people as my wife had passed away after two days of sickness prior to the day.

Mr Kumalo lives in a mud house with his son who cooks for him and three granddaughters. Mr Mdluli says “residents should not panic especially those who were affected  by floods and still have not received any help, we are still trying to file the flood victims’ details with the Municipality’s officials as the councillors do not have any power to place people in the houses. “We never thought that floods could occur but we are trying to accommodate them (flood victims). I have spoken with the constructors to try to speed up the process of building houses to make sure that everyone gets accommodated and we want people to occupy the houses” Mr Mdluli says .

Online Journalism in South Africa

Online Journalism in South Africa

Online Journalism can be defined as the reporting of facts produced and distributed through the internet. This material is created by journalists who work for mainstream market driven news organisations. The internet also offers options such as news feeds aggregators which compile news from different sites into one site. The internet has also given participation to people who are normally not journalists. It challenges traditional news organization in several ways; newspapers may lose classified advertising to websites.

Online Journalism allows for much greater immediacy. It also reflects changes in society as well as technology. Online journalists are cautiously optimistic expanding the newsroom.  Online Journalists are able to publish news as they happen and update stories on national or international level. Google is known as the most popular news aggregator.

News24.com

News24.com is Southern African and Africa’s premiers’ online news resource and is a full member of the Online Publishers Association, (OPA). It is independent run and has online news.  It hosts for Afrikaans websites, Beeld, Die Burger and other web sites of newspapers in Afrikaans.

News24 has a good quality of pictures and focuses mainly on local and International news as they happen. They do not have discussion forums or online live audios to listen to and has a lot of advertisements on the site.

Multimedia Elements of News24:  

·        Video

·        Blogs

·        Accessible on Dstv

·        Social site like twitter

·        RSS Feeds

SABC News online

The SABC’s core business is to deliver a variety of high quality programs services. The SABC is government run and has broadcast and online news. The website for SABC does not a wide range of information about them; the focus is on news than advertisements. They do not host for any newspaper but for television and radio services.

The picture quality is not the best, their layout of the web as well.

Multimedia Elements of SABC:

·        Videos

·        Discussion forums

·        Audio, you can listen to live audios

·        RSS Feeds

·        Facebook and  Twitter

Sowetan

Sowetan Live represents the printed newspaper, the web site and external services. It is independent run by Avusa and has online news and print only. It focuses mainly on local and international and has a local newspaper. The layout of the web is more like that of a newspaper, picture quality is good, but they’re in a small size.

Multimedia Elements of Sowetan:

·        Photos

·        RSS Feeds

·        Blogs

·        Live Mobile Site

·        Facebook and Twitter

http://www.news24.com/

http://www.sabc.co.za/wps/portal/SABC/SABCHOME

http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/?gclid=CIutuf3tw6cCFQwhfAod_GduDA