Stand up for scandal by Mpiwa Bagwasi

Can I puh-leeeaz just have a moment to scream, kick, laugh and throw my hands and legs in the air as I give an astounding round of applause to what I consider to be by far one of the top blogs I have ever feasted my eyes upon http://www.ruscandalous.blogspot.com/ . We all LURRVV a little bit of scandal in our lives, our ears are on high alert when the word “scandal” is mentioned, so it is only fitting that when I saw name of the blog- “ruscandalous” my hand controlled the mouse pad like a guide dog, I was instantly enticed. I was welcomed by an image which seemed to be a distorted picture of the Rhodes clock tower, I say distorted because it also looked like a frowning face, as I scrolled the page, I was met with juicy pink lips, whispering pink magic. So much effort was put into the what the blog looked like, that I was fearful that what it said would be a complete let down…they proved me wrong, the brilliant appearance matched up to the outstanding content.
The writers of this blog promised scandal and boy did they deliver! I specifically enjoyed that their scandal wasn’t empty petty scandal we hear about on tabloid blogs and newspapers, it also wrote about other scandals, other than personal ones, they wrote about political scandal, homosexuality, music, scandal across the world as well as local scandal. All their posts stuck to their theme of “scandal” and I was most impressed as while searching other blogs, many of them seemed to deviate from what they initially hoped to achieve. This blog was easy to read because it was well written, the entries were enticing and they all raised some form of debate, where many people could comment. They cleverly used pictures to assist the readers in deeply understanding what the article was about.
I highly rate this blog and I urge everybody who shares the common interest of hearing, reading, writing and talking scandal to read this blog http://www.ruscandalous.blogspot.com/ It would definitely be a scandal if you didn’t!

Back to my roots by Mpiwa Bagwasi

I was doing my Journalism work experience this past September holidays and I was smacked by a rude awakening when I was asked to translate a news story into my mother tougue language-Setswana. I started to sweat blood, I tell you, as I couldn’t even finish half the sentence. I felt so ashamed, above all, disappointed in myself because my parents worst night-mare had come true…their daughter had forgotten her own language!

Your mother tongue language is the language taught by your parents and inherited form them. I had thrown it back in their face and allowed myself to be charmed by the “language of the white man”. This is why I decided to challenge myself and do something I have never ever done before, Speak only Setswana for a whole 2hours. I know right, what am I thinking? I don’t know, but I’m out to prove a point here. I recruited my friends to smack me every time I uttered an English word and im not joking when I say even my chocolate skin turned red. Despite the many fall backs, many laughs, confused faces, my as well as everybody’s frustrations, because, only a total of three people could understand and talk back to me, I soldiered on, I spoke my mother tongue for a whole 2 hours (minus the relapses ofcourse!), my parents would defiantly be proud that I escaped to my roots…even if it was for a little while!

We are hereby the Sunset Kids!

When pondering upon an entirely novel experience to try for my journ piece, a couple of friends and I decided to make the great trek up to the monument and witness the sun set upon Grahamstown. Admittedly it became a tad chilly, but once the sun began to creep further and further out of vision with the creamy clouds oozing around in the sky, it was quite magnificent. Rays of light shining through and a very fresh breeze to keep us alert it was such a stimulating thing to do. I’m so glad that we brought a camera along because the photo opportunities were remarkable and we’ve all made a pact to watch the sunsets at Monument more often… And you should try it too =)

Have you seen the missing goat files?
By Caroline King


The topsy-turvey blogworld of the girls who created http://themissinggoatfiles.blogspot.com is hilarious and quirky. I stumbled across their blog by accident and once I started snooping around it, I was hooked! Their preamble is even attention grabbing “The G.O.A.T Files: These are the missing files of the Glorified, Opinionated, Angry Tampon-wearers!” Although I know a lot of guys who would be somewhat squeamish with the latter part of that description…

The template of the blog is extraordinarily average but the colour scheme is femininely pleasant and spiced up with wacky photos of goats with braces, and Rhodent girls strutting around campus in night gowns, slippers and hair curlers. Touché on having the spunk to walk around Rhodes looking like trailer trash! Seriously, the power to laugh at oneself and set oneself up for being the butt of a joke is admirable.

They have a penchant for using some less-than-lady-like language, even in their quiz they use the word ‘fuck’. I know this is aimed at students and most students like to let loose and pretend that they are rebels, but out of respect for people with milder vocabularies I think they could have toned it down a little. These young women clearly take their slogan to heart and express their “angry-tampon-wearer-ness”

This blog has vast amounts of energy and personality and the team seems to have worked hard on it, overall these G.O.A.T Files were worth taking the time to read.

Deformation of Character?

By Mike Kurai Chimhini
With the high rate of crime in South Africa many people are now living their lives insecurely. Even in your own private space, one these days always have to be aware of the people around you, what they are doing and always to be defensive when trouble comes. People are now always hesitant of what might happen to them even in places where they are supposed to feel free and exercise their freedom to the maximum for instance homes and supermarkets.
Last Saturday in the afternoon I decided to wander inside Pick and Pay supermarket for more than 30 minutes with no intention of buying anything but just to observe the reaction of the customers and the securities. This was part of a Journalism task to do something that I had never done before. I was successful with my mission for the first 20 minutes till some old lady felt threatened by my presence in the supermarket and reported me to the guards that I had been following her in the supermarket since she had got in. As far as I was concerned, I was not following anyone but I was just moving around. I tried justifying my intentions but they would not believe me as they were convinced that I wanted to shoplift or I was targeting to steal from one of the customers after they were done with their shopping. After being searched and they found nothing on me I was asked to leave the supermarket if I did not intend to buy anything as I was now a threat to other customers.
What does this say about the South African community and crime? Was it deformation of character or not? If it was, who should we blame? This as well suggests that there are a lot of innocent people who are serving sentences when they did not even commit any crime. It is high time the whole of South Africa as a community work towards ending crime and the perceptions related tied to it.

Review on I Know What You Wrote Last Semester Blog

By Mike Kurai Chimhini
I Know What You Wrote Last Semester is one of the few Rhodes journalism student blogs with a personality. The authors of this blog have been consistent to their aim of criticising and scrutinising anything that has got to do with journalism ranging from social, political and economic. This blog has been able to provide readers with a variety of issues which they provided their own opinions to. More so, they have been able to provoke some well known controversial issues with civility which is a thing many other blogs failed to do.
Many readers normally look forward to reading blogs that provide them with relevant topics to their lives. Despite going astray a bit on content, generally this blog can be used as a good example of what readers expect from student journalism blogs. Even though some of the contributors to this blog were not proof reading their posts before publishing them which led to a lot of grammatical errors, most of their posts were coherent to each other even though there were four contributors. Unlike other journalism student blogs, with this blog, readers were provided with a platform to draw their own conclusions to certain issues even though the authors had also given their own points of view on the same issues.
Lastly, I think the creators of this blog could have improved their blog by not only posting the course assigned assignments but by also adding their own posts on views which had nothing to do with the assigned topics.

Who decides what justice is nowadays?
By Caroline King


Everyone has one firm opinion or cause that they are wholly dedicated to. What would yours be? I must say that the issue of who controls justice in the world is mine.

“Justice!” you can imagine some hero in a roman gladiator film screaming at the top of his lungs as the camera slides in closer to his rugged face. Don’t you feel that justice is a matter that deserves to be shouted out passionately for all to hear? If you ponder, who controls the justice in the world? Too many criminals get away with murder (literally and figuratively), and there is no justice. In South Africa and many countries prisons are overpopulated, so criminals who have nowhere near carried out their sentences are allowed to go free. Do they even need to feel remorse for rape and murder and child molestation when they’re almost guaranteed a light sentence if they’re caught? This must certainly affect the power of justice.

If there was adequate punishment for the likes of rapists and murderers, for example the death penalty, which is admittedly a less than perfect system, but a far more effective warning and solution to all extreme criminals. Ideally, this would solve the problem of overcrowded prisons and of careless crimes against one’s fellow man. The world is going in a steep downward spiral and people need to learn to treat others humanely or things will surely end in a horrible way.