CCS has run a number of community participatory documentary training workshops aimed at equipping communities and campaigns to frame their struggles and agency through the visual medium.
Cato Manor Participatory Video Workshop, 28th October 2000
On 28th October 2009, we conducted a one-day participatory video (PV) workshop at Umkhumbane Library with seven young participants, plus Faith Manzi from the Centre for Civil Society who joined us after lunch. All participants were under 25 years of age, except for one man aged 33 and MaManzi. The group expressed great thanks and enjoyment at the end of the day and wish to be involved with more workshops of this nature.
After initial skills-building exercises, a group discussion on the key issues faced by the Cato Manor community, especially the youth (given the background of participants) was facilitated. This served as brain-storming exercise to generate ideas for the ‘stories’ they could tell in their film. Facilitators encouraged participants to voice their concerns and priorities, from their own position and experience. We also encouraged a discussion of xenophobia and how it related to the other community issues raised.
After initial skills-building exercises, a group discussion on the key issues faced by the Cato Manor community, especially the youth (given the background of participants) was facilitated. This served as brain-storming exercise to generate ideas for the ‘stories’ they could tell in their film. Facilitators encouraged participants to voice their concerns and priorities, from their own position and experience. We also encouraged a discussion of xenophobia and how it related to the other community issues raised.
The immediate concerns of the participants, particularly in relation to the kind of film they wanted to make, meant that trying to focus them on xenophobia would have been rather contrived. We instead encouraged the group to begin by focussing on what they believed to be the key issues of their community. The following points were raised, in the order stated:
- Youth need a way to express talents: need activities and opportunities.
- There is a neglect of young people and a desire for more skills development for youth.
- Crime: young people get into crime because of poverty and neglect.
- There is a bad perception of ‘ghettos’ but there is a lot of creativity and recycling here; people make the most of a bad situation and their ingenuity should be recognised.
- We need motivation to make good things happen in our community. This applies especially for single, young mothers- girls who missed out of their education.
- There is a BIG problem with homemade alcohol, made out of battery acid and terrible stuff- it’s killing many people, mostly older people. It’s illegal, 100% alcohol, addictive and cheap.
- We need skills development, training, etc.
- Housing is a big issue in Cato Manor, which received the first RDP houses in the mid-1990s. But these houses are too small and too few. There are still a lot of shacks and these sometime grow up around formal housing- sometimes rented spaces from landlords. Now community members are selling these ‘free’ houses to outsiders. They also rent them out at very high prices, while people in shacks remain on waiting lists for housing.
- Need JOBS in Cato Manor
- We need to be more self-sufficient and not sit around waiting for the government to help us.
- Stealing of electricity is common and has killed many of us (through accidents).
- Drugs (are a problem in Cato Manor).
Following this brainstorming activity, the group were asked to think about xenophobia in their community and consider how it effects them and if it would make a good topic for their film. The general response was a shaking of heads. The young people admitted that they were aware that xenophobia was a big problem in South Africa but believed that it was not a major issue in Cato Manor, at least not in their lives. We asked them to recall the events of May 2008 and what they remembered about that time. They did not believe that there had been any systematic episode of xenophobia in the township. They said that they know of non-South Africans in their community and are not aware of any problems.
Their key argument on this issue was that the xenophobic violence (including isolated incidents in their community) was directly related to drug abuse and the media. They argued that anyone involved in perpetrating xenophobic violence was likely to be under the influence of drugs and drug addiction. Moreover, they suggested that drug-addicts in their community and perhaps in Durban at large had been negatively affected and influenced by media reports of violence in Johannesburg. They argued that this was the down-side to cameras; images can have negative effects and influence people to do bad things, particularly mentally unstable people with drug dependence issues. Thus, a key argument put forward by the group is that xenophobia should not be understood as a ‘rational’ state of mind or set of actions, but an expression of mental and health imbalances and an inability to ‘think straight’.
This was the extent of the young peoples’ discussion on xenophobia in their community. They collectively decided to focus instead on making a film covering a wide range of struggles in Umkhumbane: youth needs; heath issues; drugs; alcohol; housing; and crime.
On 23rd October 2009, we conducted a one-day participatory video (PV) workshop at Lotus Primary School in Chatsworth, with a group composed mainly of Westcliff Housing Association members. Ten women took part intermittently, with only six staying for the entire day and working on the final community film.
After initial skills-building exercises, a group discussion on the key issues faced by the Chatsworth community was facilitated. Facilitators encouraged participants to voice their concerns and priorities, from their own position and experience. We also encouraged a discussion of xenophobia and how it related to the other community issues raised.
The issue of drugs, drug abuse and especially “sugars” dominated the discussion and the concern of this group. As women, responsible for family welfare and subject to abuse by drug-users in their own families, this was their number one community issue. This is reflected in their focus on the negative effect of drug abuse in their film.
During a brainstorming session, the following issues were listed by participants (in the order stated here) as key issues in Chatsworth (and as possible themes for their film):
- Sugars (especially the effect on young people and their families)
- Drug abuse generally, especially by young people and at schools
- Drunks- alcohol abuse
- Family Violence
- Theft
- Prostitution, especially teenage prostitution
- Crime (generally)
- Abuse of parents by children (as an effect of drug abuse)
- Corruption in the police
- Orphans
- Lack of justice
After this identification of themes, we steered the discussion towards the issue of xenophobia in Chatsworth and surrounding communities. It was argued by the participants that xenophobia was not a problem or issue per se in Chatsworth itself, at least not in Unit 3. However, xenophobic violence did erupt last year in neighbouring communities (Bottlebrush in particular) and the Westcliff Housing Association (WHA) were involved in the intervention that followed this violence.
Chatsworth police station became a refuge for foreigners who had fled their homes in informal settlements close to Chatsworth, which was itself seen as a ‘neutral’ area. Around 50 foreign nationals sought refuge in the police station. The WHA were involved in supplying food and blankets to the refugees. The Association sought funds from local benefactor, Professor Fatima ___, to pay for these supplies. The volunteers focussed their attention on women and children who were in need of food and clothing.
The group discussed how the refugees wanted to return to their countries of origin after the attacks and were very afraid of returning to the informal settlements. WHA took 25 people to the church in Westville where a repatriation effort was being coordinated. Refugees were supposed to put their names on a ‘repatriation’ list via the disaster management team. Many were unable to communicate with the correct persons to get their names on the list.
The refugees fleeing Bottlebrush, who headed for Chatsworth, were mostly of Mozambiquan and Malawian origin. The group discussed how the Zimbabwean refugees tended to flee instead to the Cathedral in the city centre. It was not known whether this was related to social networks of different nationals, or if the Mozambiquans and Malawians stayed relatively closer to Chatsworth than other non-nationals in Bottlebrush.
We then returned to the list of community issues to address how the xenophobia, anti-xenophobia and WHA response to the xenophobic violence were related to the other issues faced in Chatsworth. The general position was the xenophobia was not a big issue in Chatsworth; it was reasoned that there are non-nationals living here peacefully and that there were no incidents of violence at the time of attacks elsewhere. When asked why it was the case that people DID NOT, in general, harbour xenophobic sentiments in Chatsworth- or at least that foreigners were not a specific target of violence in the community- it was suggested that the community of Chatsworth had a history of integration since 1994, with Africans integrating into a formerly Indian area with no negative backlash. It was suggested that Chatsworth was a place of solidarity and cross-cultural understanding, particularly following community battles for housing and water. A history of community struggles and solidity had led, they suggested, to a ‘sense of sharing’ among the poor in Chatsworth and the group argued that Chatsworth was ‘accommodating’ of outsiders.
When asked why they thought xenophobia and xenophobic violence had become a huge problem in neighbouring communities, they suggested that the violence was politically instigated; that it did not come out of nowhere. They related it to the violence that recently erupted in Kennedy Road, which is well-known to be politically motivated although based on tribalist rhetoric. Perhaps political rivalry had somehow instigated the xenophobic violence in the African communities, they suggested.
However, when the dominant participant left the room and the others were encouraged to voice their own opinions on the matter, it seemed that there was a strong feeling that the xenophobia was about the jealously harboured by black South Africans of other Africans who were willing to work hard and make progress in their lives. It was argued that the migrants work harder than South Africans, who are ‘lazy’. Some of the women know personally of migrants who they can pay less to do work for them than if they were to hire a South African. They were implicitly speaking of black South Africans.
When asked what should be done, it was suggested that the foreigners be sent back to their countries so that South Africans can get homes and jobs more easily. Again, this was voiced in the absence of the dominant participant, who had more liberal views.
In discussing how xenophobia was linked to other community problems, they argued that it was easy (though not entirely fair) to blame Nigerians for bringing drugs into their community- drugs were seen as the biggest single issue in Chatsworth.
As a result of this discussion, the group decided to focus their film firstly on what the WHA had done to support the victims of xenophobia who fled to Chatsworth in May 2008. It was felt that this might inspire others to also act with more compassion. Secondly, they wanted to focus on the detrimental impact of drug abuse on their community. It was felt that drugs were linked to all the other social ills and problems faced in Chatsworth: theft, prostitution, domestic violence, corruption and an increase in orphans.
