Action 254, Dezember 2003

Sean Hawkey

Communication holds the key to containing HIV transmission and coping with the effects of the AIDS pandemic. However, over the last 20 years communicators have failed spectacularly to confront and contain HIV/AIDS, and in this period it has killed more than 20 million people. Just last year more than 3 million died from AIDS. Here we take a look at a new Panos report which brings together lessons from the many failures and few successes in HIV communication strategies over the last 20 years.

Sean Hawkey

As South Africa completes a decade of democracy, the headlines of a Cape Town newspaper read: “98% of whites get a job, 3% of blacks”. The social divisions and economic structures of apartheid haven’t disappeared. And, because such inequalities have not been changed by a decade of democracy, because black people are still poor, there is widespread disenchantment with the democratic process. Informing poor people about the importance of using their vote, especially younger people, is an uphill struggle.

Sean Hawkey

It is said that South Africa is in danger of having a democracy without people, this is especially in the case of disabled people. Their full and equal participation is essential to a healthy democracy and communicating this is a major task for Michael Mpahawa of Democracy Radio in Cape Town.

Sean Hawkey

Mediaworks’ main aim is to provide trainees with the opportunity for employment, to assist communities to set up and run their own community media projects and to empower civil society organisations to acquire better communications skills and media production techniques. Mediaworks provides courses in photography and dark room skills, dance, computer skills including internet, painting, pottery, social communication and management skills; access to equipment; capacity building for community based initiatives; basic media training for high school students and a grassroots social marketing campaign on HIV/AIDS awareness in 2001

Sean Hawkey

The Prison Media programme is run in partnership between Mediaworks and the Department of Correctional Services South Africa. It targets rural and women’s prisons in the Western Cape. The project has a media training component and results in the ongoing production of prison newsletters by and for inmates. The newsletters act as an important medium for education, information dissemination and entertainment as well as conflict resolution within prisons. It is designed to function as a “demonstration model” with a strong emphasis on lobbying with the long-term goal of institutionalizing arts and media/communication training as an integral part of rehabilitation programmes within South African Prisons.  

Sean Hawkey

Salty Print specialises in printing and origination, and since 1989 has created self-sustainable work for unemployed people by providing printing and other media services for churches, NGOs, community and political groups, university projects, small businesses and government agencies. To achieve this WACC helped Salty Print upgrade its obsolete printing machine by acquiring an A 22 Colour Heidelberg Press.

Sean Hawkey

The Global Communicators Network, GCN, is an association of communications professionals whose work and commitment relates to the quest for a more just, sustainable and participatory world order. Representatives from development and international aid agencies related to the World Council of Churches formed the network which includes individuals representing 40 organisations from all over the world.

Mark Kaplan is the director of ‘Between Joyce and Remembrance’ a hard-hitting documentary about truth and reconciliation focusing on the family of murdered student activist Siphiwo Mtimkulu. Following the lives of Joyce and Sikhumbuzo Mtimkulu, mother and son of the murdered young man, Kaplan uses 7 years of footage to build up to a meeting of the family with Siphiwo's killer Gideon Nieuwoudt (inset). The film is currently being used in conflict situations all over the world. Photo: Sean Hawkey

THRU is a campaigning and educational human rights organisation which takes an ethical approach to human rights as an effective way to promote the diversity and complexity of South African life. THRU has joined with Women’s Media Watch to form the Southern African Media and Gender Institute, SAMGI, and runs a variety of media and legal projects including: