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.

Dont take it lying down by Mpiwa Bagwasi

Where would South Africa be if people like the great Nelson Mandela and one of the most respected journalists Steve Biko did not challenge the Apartheid regime and did not fight for what they believed they deserved? It would have remained a backward and primitive nation where interracial marriage would be taboo, a land where Castor Semenya would have never received the opportunity to compete in the Olympics and where freedom of speech would only be an unattainable goal for Journalists.

Of course it makes sense now that all these prospects are ludicrous but for those who took it lying down and accepted this…somehow it all made sense to them. Perhaps because they believed that indeed, they were inferior or they settled for less than they deserved-non equality. There is always a platform to settle on, a place to blame current situations which we believe we cannot change, this platform is circumstance. Just like a penny in a well, my heart drops when I see the streets of Africa flooded by skwatter kamps and street children believing that stealing is the only way to survive and journalists writing empty and bogus stories which only serve the purpose of humiliating the subject. It is so distressing to see people settle for way less than they deserve, how do we look at the enormous transformation from Apartheid to Democracy and still believe that we cannot change our circumstance? In the wise words of the President of America, Barack Obama “YES WE CAN”. So if you continue to settle for less and rest on the dreadful platform of circumstance, great opportunity and change will fly over you as you take it lying down.

The undeserving being rewarded!

By Mike Chimhini.
Noble peace prize has been awarded 90 times to 120 Nobel laureates between 1901 and 2009. South Africa’s own archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela and Frederic Willem de Klerk are some of the previous winners of this prestigious award for their activism in promoting peace. It has been awarded 97 times to individuals and 23 times to organisations from all over the world that have stood out in promoting peace. This year the award was given to Barack Obama whom I think do not deserve it at all for he has not yet done anything in upholding peace which is the key theme of the award. More so, in contrast to the principles of the award he is even considering sending more troops in to Afghanistan for the war there to continue.
This award could have been given to someone more deserving than Obama. One possible candidate could have been Morgan Tsvangirai the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe who was also one of the nominees for this award. Tsvangirai has been involved in promoting peace in Zimbabwe ever since the crisis there erupted. More so, he has advocated for human rights and for his efforts he should have been rewarded. According to the governing board for this award, Obama got the Award for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people. I think this reason has got little to do with promoting peace which therefore shows that the body has lost its theme and focus in awarding the award. More so, this will have a negative effect on the relevance of this once prominent award.

0 is NOT a size!!! By: Mpiwa Bagwasi

It is nearly 3 years ago when the world watched an emaciated model faint on the modelling ramp in front of many fashion spectators at the Madrid fashion Week. The world celebrated as the initiative was taken by the organisers to ban underweight models from walking the ramp. Despite the advancement, there has been serious backtracking as it seems that size 0 has stealthily moved back into fashion.
Fillippa Hamilton has been a loyal model to Ralph Lauren for 8 years, this is why it came as a complete shock for her when she was booted off by the organisation she considered her second family. What came as a bigger shock to the world and to her was the reason why she was booted off, she says “They fired me because they said I was overweight and I couldn't fit in their clothes anymore”, mind you, she is only 120 pounds, which is equivalent to 60kg, which is the perfect size for her 5-foot-10 height. As if this is enough damage, the bigger problem is that the ad she modelled for Ralph Lauren was photo shopped to the extreme that she could not recognize her body, she was made extremely skinny and Hamilton believed that the photoshoppped picture sent the wrong message to the public.http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/fashion/2009/10/14/2009-10-14_model_fired_for_being_too_fat.html
Various newspapers and online newspapers, interestingly covered this story, some were outraged at the shocking photo of Hamilton http://www.accesshollywood.com/content/images/104/230x306/104458_a-polo-ralph-lauren-ad-from-tokyo-which-was-originally-posted-on-photoshop-disasters-and-which-the-fashion-maker-admitted-is-authentic.jpg and others completely slated Ralph Lauren-who were the miniminds behind the photo shopping, while others expressed their disgust towards the message being portrayed by the modelling world and others like myself were most disappointed at the fact that the idealistic image of size 0 models that had been polished was creeping back into fashion. The tabloids seemed more interested in the scandalous aspect of the story, emphasizing on the fact that the Ralph Lauren ad was photo shopped to make Hamilton look ridiculously skinny, such a online newspaper which thrived on this was http://www.gossipcheck.com/latest-gossip/9806-photoshopped-ralph-lauren-model-fired-being-overweight.html#post19306.
After all is said and done, the media has the power to silence the world of modelling that believe that skinny is healthy as well as the designers who only makes clothes for the super skinny and they can shout “ 0 is NOT a size!”

Suffering for what she can not change

Caster Semenya is an 18 year old South African athlete who has been subjected to trauma by the public scrutiny for the fate she can not change. Semenya unlike most women is muscular, flat-chested and can easily be mistaken for a man. After winning the 800m women’s race in Berlin speculation about her sex and possible doping started circulating.

If Semenya is not cleared to be a woman by the tests being carried out by the IAAF she faces the risk of losing her medal; the IAAF says it will only release the results in November. However the leaked results of these tests suggest that Semenya is a hermaphrodite meaning she has both male and female organs. My questions on this mater are what define a woman or a man? If Caster is not a woman or a man then what is she? More so, who determines these categories, scientists?

Considering the fact that Caster has survived 18 years of her life as a woman, is it fair for her to be treated the way she has been treated? Recently the IAAF released another document which said they are about to come up with a formula for defining a woman, is it because Semenya who does not look like a woman won the race? If she had not won the race in Berlin, would the case still be the same? Would she have gone through the tests? Well no one knows.

The life and carrier of an innocent young girl has been tarnished by human cruelty and selfishness, what is this world coming to? She is suffering because of a fate she can not change. It is not her fault, SHE DESERVES TO BE TREATED BETTER!!!

The mysteries of Wacko Jacko’s autopsy results…
By Caroline King

Michael Jackson is rated as the world’s greatest and probably most controversial pop star. His hit song Thriller is still the highest selling single today, but he was also associated with child molestation and a fetish for plastic surgery… Now the King of Pop is gone, and he leaves behind him a few more surprises.

The British version of the Daily Sun at www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2505693/The-shock-findings-of-the-Michael-Jackson-autopsy.html of course sensationalises his autopsy, saying that “leaked autopsy details” show that he was bald, sickly-looking and had “nothing but pills in his stomach”. How tabloid-typical! They also claim that he was anorexic and addicted to injectable painkillers. Poor Jacko never had it easy and The Sun certainly didn’t care to help him!

One site (www.michaeljacksonfakeddeath.com) declares that he is still alive and must have faked his own death. It even has a link to a youtube video of an unidentified person climbing out of the back of the coroner’s van that was supposedly containing the corpse of Michael Jackson. I admit, the person (hidden by a security guard) does look like he could be Jackson, but in this day and age one can never really tell what’s a hoax, and what’s a weirdo pop star playing dead.

A nice, balanced deliverer of news was the yahoo news site – although it reports this to be shocking news; it reveals that Jackson was actually reasonably healthy for a 50 year old man of his height, and that a fatal dose of the painkiller Demerol is what killed MJ.

Music IS food for the soul!

Graffiti in Grahamstown!

Intervarsity Nostalgia

Lay it on thick!

Lay it on thick!
Mpiwa Bagwasi
First Year Spread

Who am I?...Now, that’s a secret I’m willing to tell. My name is Mpiwa Bagwasi and I am one of the lucky heads to write for First Year Spread. The one quote that could easily describe me is taken from the ever so hilarious Austin Powers: Goldmember movie “I am Foxy Cleopatra and I’m a whole lotta woman” mmmmmhmm (*snap snap*). Indeed that is who I am…I am a whole lotta woman! I’m ambitious, I am ready to pack my bags and head off to Hollywood to be a BIG star! I want to be Africa’s own Oprah…hold on, let me rephrase that “I AM Africa’s next Oprah Winfrey! My attitude has a mind of its own, it’s charming, confident and opinionated and I strive to make sure that every person I meet whether in the dusty streets of the township or the bright lights of the city adopts the attitude that we can ALL make a difference in the world.

The upbeat, critical, creative, exciting and informative blog you are feasting your eyes upon is called First Year Spread. It is created by three enthusiastic and very curious first year Journalism students studying at Rhodes University, South Africa. This blog is an open book, what we read is what you get and trust me when I say it is a fun, witty, exhilarating, light-hearted, tongue-in- cheek compilation of critical reviews on journalism-related media such as compelling novels, interesting newspaper articles, TV shows and news reports. First Year Spread will also feature yours truly’s opinions on what’s fresh out the oven in terms of current affairs and student-related matters, what smells good or bad in news events to social and personal matters concerning students from all over the world.

I have learnt in the past year as an aspiring journalist that Journalism is the ability for everyone to use their freedom of speech and exercise their freedom to think and feel and express their thoughts and feelings through various mediums. So view this blog as a platform of expressing whatever you like. Ok so,have you often been asked the common question “do you like reading” and immediately came up with the answer “no” only because you cannot remember the last time you rummaged through the library looking for a novel since high school or the last time you went into your local supermarket to purchase anything other than a tabloid newspaper . Well, wipe the sweat off your face because, novels and political news stories are not everyone’s cup of tea and that is the beauty of Journalism, you read what YOU like and that is certainly the beauty of our blog, it features anything catchy and light-hearted. So if you are also really thinking life IS really too short to take it too serious, but it IS long enough for you to LIVE IT! First Year Spread is definitely the blog for you! Feast your eyes and ears and ENJOY!