August 2007

AUGUST 2007

To view PDF

EDITION:  VUVUZELA, AUGUST 31, 2007

“Journalism is a moral weapon”

 

ERICA DREIJER

INDIAN Editor Tarun Tejpal told Wits student last Friday that he believes journalists should “develop into moral warriors” by distinguishing between what’s right and wrong and backing what’s right. 

Tejpal is editor-in-chief of Tehelka, an independent weekly paper in India. The paper broke the cricket match-fixing story that exposed Hansie Cronje, former South African captain. 

Being a journalist does not mean sitting on the fence, but getting involved, he said.  He believes journalists must “roll up your sleeves, get into the gutter and do the dirty work.” 

The “easy way out [for journalists] is to be the dispassionate observer,” he said.

He cited his own publication, Tehelka (literally meaning panic), an independent newspaper which he started with the intention of being in opposition to power. Originally it was published online, to cut down on costs like distribution, printing and paper and ensure that the “money can go where it should go, into journalism.”

Tehelka was intended to serve the public by asking uncomfortable questions instead of delivering trivia about Bollywood and Paris Hilton’s life, he said.

In 2001, after an eight-month investigation, Tehelka blew the whistle on Indian’s biggest corruption scandal by exposing bribery in a government arms deal.  “All hell broke loose,” he said.

The defence minister and a number of generals resigned.  People were arrested.  The government “just went for us,” he said.  Tejpal survived an attempted assassination.  A commission of inquiry was opened and he “was accused of everything under the sun”. For three years, he and his family lived in constant fear for their lives.

Some days they would literally have to decide on which computer to sell, to stop the newspaper from being closed down. The website closed, but in the public’s eyes, the journalists of Tehelka “became overnight heroes.”

Tehelka had become aligned to something much bigger than just being a newspaper.  “We had become a metaphor for much larger truths,” he said.

It became important to revive the newspaper. 

“My sense, was that if we let Tehelka die, the whole issue of investigative journalism in India would suffer a tremendous blow.  If we bring Tehelka back, it gives a message that you might have to try something else, but you can succeed.  It gives hope,” he said.

Tejpal embarked on a nine-month campaign, travelling across India and addressing people on street corners and in night clubs asking them for their support.

Tehelka re-opened its doors in the beginning of 2004 as a print publication.

According to Tejpal, there are three powers at work in a democracy: political power, money and the media.  “In most democracies, money and political power work together hand-in-hand.  The joker in the pack tends to be media,” he said.

Journalists’ role is to hold power and money accountable so that it acts responsibly and with accountability.

He said:  “Power and money have the ability to make them selves heard.  So we [in the media] only need to represent those that don’t have a voice.”

For Tejpal, “it’s not about reaching the masses, it’s the people that you reach that make decisions, those are the people you need to impact on.  If you can shift the lens for those people, that’s what important.”

Friday, August 31, 2007

The president toppler

ERICA DREIJER

NOT many can claim they contributed to the dismissal of a president.

Sheila Coronel and her team at the Phillippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) can. Their evidence contributed to President Joseph Estrada being sacked in 2001.

Coronel is visiting Wits next week for the annual Power Reporting conference of the Investigative Journalism Workshop.

Coronel began her unofficial career in journalism at an underground newspaper and her official career when she joined the Philippine Panorama as a reporter in 1982.

In 1983 she reported on the protests that followed opposition leader Benigno Aquino’s death.  Aquino was killed on the tarmac of the Manila airport on his return from exile in Boston. 

She came face to face with angry crowds shouting:  “Write the truth.  Write what you see.”  It was her first call to become an investigative journalist, Cornel has said.

She reported on human rights issues, the growing democratic movement and Corazon Aquino’s election as president.

She also worked for the Manila Chronicle as a political reporter and covered seven attempted coups against the Aquino government for The New York Times and The Guardian (London).

She and her colleagues started the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism in 1989, working from a borrowed office with second-hand equipment and no paid staff except for a secretary.

The PCIJ trained journalists in investigative skills and reported on major social issues like the military, poverty and corruption. 

Some of their initial stories forced the resignations of officials, including several Cabinet ministers and one Supreme Court justice.

In 2000, they embarked on a year-long investigation on the wealth of Estrada, a boozing, womanizing former movie actor who was wildly popular among ordinary Filipinos.

They uncovered his extravagant lifestyle, which lead to him being charged with corruption and finally to his dismissal.

Under Coronel’s leadership, the Center became the premier investigative reporting institution in the Philippines and Asia.

She is the author and editor of Coups, Cults & Cannibals, a collection of reportage; The Rulemakers: How the wealthy and well-born dominate Congress; and Pork and other Perks: Corruption and Governance in the Philippines, and has received numerous awards and widespread recognition of her work, including the Ramon Magsaysay Award, which some calls Asia’s Nobel Prize.

Friday, August 31, 2007

EDITION:  VUVUZELA, AUGUST 24, 2007
 
WBS a name to remember

ERICA DREIJER

WITS Business School ranked as the top business school in South Africa according to the Top Brands Survey held annually by the Sunday Times and Markinor.

The business school improved its overall awareness from 15.8 percent in 2006 to 20 percent in 2007.

Prof. Mthuli Ncube, director of the school, told Vuvuzela that he believes the increase is a result of all the new programmes that have been introduced.

The school has introduced 70 short courses to address specific needs and a service delivery course that will be attended by 2 000 municipal staff members in the near future. 

Ncube said these programmes help to keep the school relevant by tackling public needs.

Another initiative that was introduced to raise the school’s profile was the “intellectual beehive”, which involves public discussions on issues of national relevance.
 
Ncube’s goal is that Wits should be a place for “sculpting global leaders within Africa”.

He has identified nine initiatives or “pillars” to ensure that Wits remains top of its class.  “Each day I wake up and decide on which pillar I am going to focus on,” he said.

The “pillars” include improving the current MBA programme and the faculty, international and community initiatives, and on-going engagement with corporates and WBS alumni. Ncube believes that it is important to maintain contact with alumni, as “they tell the real story out there”.

From next year, the MBA programme will include a two-month internship, to make the course more practical and help students gain experience in the field while studying.

The school will also be building a hotel facility on campus to bolster international training.

Ncube was acting director of the school from May 2006 and took up the position of director on January 1, 2007.  He joined WBS in 2005 as Professor of Finance and holds a PhD in Finance from Cambridge University.

He has just finished a book and has published ten papers in the last two years.

He believes that his success can be attributed to time management, focus and passion.  “I only do things that I am passionate about,” he said.

In 2006, WBS was ranked 45th in the world in terms of business schools. Ncube would like the school to rank at 35 before his term comes to an end.

Friday, August 24, 2007

Tarun Tejpal visits Wits for seminar

ERICA DREIJER

INDIAN editor, Tarun Tejpal, well-known locally for exposing matchfixing in cricket, will address Wits students on Journalism in a Democracy: A perspective from India, on Friday.

Tejpal is editor-in-chief of the weekly Tehelka, an independent weekly paper in India. The paper’s Operation West End exposed corruption in India’s large defence contracts. This led to the resignation of the minister of defence.

In 2002 he was named by Business Week as a leader of change in Asia.
 
Tehelka, also called the people’s paper, was launched after the online success of Tehelka.com.

Tejpal studied economics in Chandigarh and became a journalist in the 1980s.  He worked for India Today magazine and helped found the rival Outlook.

His debut novel, The Alchemy of Desire, has been an international best seller. As the creator of India Ink, he became the first publisher of Booker Prize winning author Arundhati Roy.

The talk will take place at 3pm in the Grad School seminar room, South West Engineering Building, East Campus.  For more information go to www.journalism.co.za or phone 011 717 4028.

Friday, August 24, 2007

Wits world ranking reeks

ERICA DREIJER

ACCORDING to the Webometrics Ranking on global universities released in July this year, Wits ranked third in Africa, and ended at 679th place worldwide.

This seemed far off Wits’ goal of becoming one of the top 100 universities in the world by 2010.

Vuvuzela decided to investigate further, to get a better understanding of what the ranking means.

Dr Mohamed Moolla, head of service and learning partnerships at Wits, says that Webometrics is not the only university ranking, and that all the rankings available could present a minefield if you didn’t understand what each one measures.

To set the record straight, he said that the Wits 2010 goal extends to 2022, when the university turns 100.

Webometrics uses search engines like Google to establish a university’s presence on the web, by looking at how many web pages come up. The problem is that there isn’t one search for Wits, as it is referred to as “Wits” and the “University of the Witwatersrand”.

According to Professor Belinda Bozzoli, the Wits deputy vice-chancellor of research, “The university tends to benchmark itself alongside the more serious research-based ranking systems, like the ISI Essential Science Indicators.”

The ISI’s ranking is based on regular publication in academic journals, and looks at the top one percent of universities in the world in 22 research fields.

Wits is ranked in seven fields out of the 22, and achieved the highest number of fields in South Africa. It ranks 617 worldwide in ISI.  At the end of the day, according to Dr. Moolla, the value of the ISI study is that it “provides an indication of the faculties in which a university has achieved excellence.”

It is argued by some that this should be the main criteria used when deciding on a university, rather than its overall world ranking.

Said Prof Bozzoli, “In these [seven] fields we have already achieved our Wits 2010 goal of being in the top 100, as measured by this particular system.”

“While [Webometrics] is important and a good indicator of internet-based teaching, it does not reflect the primary goals of Wits 2010, or the primary teaching orientation of Wits, which is on site and face-to-face,” she said.

Another ranking, out of Shanghai’s Jiaotong University, publishes the Academic Ranking of the World annually. 

It is a quantitative study that looks at faculty and alumni research output, as well as awards including the Nobel Prize. Only 500 universities worldwide make the ranking, and Wits is in 305th place, alongside another 96 institutions.

But criticism against the above tool includes its heavy leaning towards science and technology related subjects, as it was originally developed to understand how Chinese universities stacked up against institutions in the West.

One more question that emerged was if universities in a developing country, like South Africa, should actually focus on achieving world rankings, when the focus should be for more people to gain access to higher education.

According to Dr. Moolla, the current ratio of under-grad to post-grad students at Wits is 70:30.  The government directive is that in five years time the post-grad student ratio needs to move up to 50 percent.

Friday, August 24, 2007

Radebe a Clever Boy

ERICA DREIJER

CHIEFS striker, David Radebe has joined the Bidvest Wits team.

Radebe signed a two year deal with the team last Monday.

Radebe was approached by several other sides after Chiefs recently listed him for transfer. 

“He’s a recognised striker with ability and we hope he’ll do well for Wits,” said Bidvest CEO Derek Blackensee.

Blackensee told Vuvuzela that he believes Radebe would make a big impact playing for Wits and the transfer would help to “help to strengthen the strike force.”

Joining Bidvest Wits will also allow Radebe to play more often.

The team needed beefing up after Boitemelo Moleyane left to join National First Division side FC AK and Bidvest Wits refused to renew Phumudzo Manenzhe’s contract.

Radebe was approached by several clubs, including Moroka Swallows.  He was the second player to find a new home from the seven that were placed on transfer by Chiefs, following Siphiwe Mkhonza’s transfer to Super Sport United last week.

Other players that have been put on transfer include Gert Schalkwyk, Emmanuel “Scara” Ngobese, Patrick Mayo, Louis Agyemang and Serge Djiehoua.

Rumour has it that Wits’ offer was around the R500 000 mark.

Radebe joined Chiefs at the start of the 2002-2003 season from Free State Stars.  For the duration of his time at Chiefs, he made a total of 134 appearances in all competitions and contributed by scoring 35 goals.

Radebe could not be reached for comment.

Friday, August 24, 2007

EDITION:  VUVUZELA, AUGUST 17, 2007

Editorial

ERICA DREIJER

IN the end, it’s all about perspective. When you are sitting in traffic and the world crawls by, it feels like you’ll only get there tomorrow. While preparing and writing exams, you believe they’ll never end.

Only a month ago, we were still enjoying the last moments of our holiday, no care in the world, no pressures weighing us down.

Now, a couple of weeks into the new semester, the end of year feels awfully close.  No time for excuses. We have to buckle down and get on with it, as pressure mounts daily.

At Vuvuzela, we are regulated by this wave of pressure and release. We hold out for the end of the week – every week.

Thursday is the day we put the paper to bed. As it looms, we feel an immense sense of panic. Insomnia sets in as we rush through to D-day. There is the almost tangible sense that we all stop breathing.

By the end of Thursday night, we let out a huge sigh of relief…

All students know the familiar feeling that the walls are closing in. They sigh, relieved to finish one deadline, only to face the next. This pressure is bad enough. It is all we should be concerned about – after all, it affects our entire future.

In these moments, the last thing we want to worry about is whether there’ll be hot water the next time we take a shower (see story on pg 1). We want to rest assured that, when we pay for our education at a world class university, it will provide us with a quality end result that will make it all worth it (see pg 2). And we want to believe that the new leadership provided by the SRC will provide us with a body that considers our needs. (Read all about it on pg 1).
 
Friday, August 24, 2007

EDITION:  VUVUZELA, AUGUST 3, 2007

 

New Zim leadership from Zanu-PF?

ERICA DREIJER

Zimbabwean Trevor Ncube, publisher of the Mail & Guardian, shocked a full Great Hall audience on Wednesday night by saying Zimbabwe needed a new political party and leadership was likely to come from the current Zanu-PF leadership.

Speaking at a Leadership Challenge in Zimbabwe forum, Ncube said the current political set-up, consisting of the ruling Zanu-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), would not help to change the current situation in Zimbabwe and a new party was required. 

“I doubt that the leader is going to come from the MDC.  For now we might find ourselves looking for leadership within the Zanu-PF,” he said.

Over the years Zanu-PF has attracted a large portion of Zimbabwe’s leadership, he said.

According to Ncube, none of the existing political parties, the church or the business community has the public interest at heart.  They all want “power for power’s sake” serving their own selfish needs and not that of the public.

A crisis of leadership exists, since “no one understands their (Zimbabweans’) pain and articulates the vision that they need.”

It’s a paralysed society in which Zimbabweans “are looking for a home but they cannot find that home,” he said.

The debate was facilitated by the Platform on Public Deliberations in association with Wits.  It forms part of series titled “Which way next?  Conversations on African leadership.”

Another panelist, writer and activist Elinor Sisulu, questioned the concept of free and fair elections in Zimbabwe.  She said that at the moment “food is being used as a weapon to disrupt voting registration, as Zimbabweans chase after food”.

In response, Tawanda Mutasah, executive director of the Open Society Initiative of Southern Africa, said it was more important to tie down a new constitution for 2008 than holding local elections.  He said, in re-building Zimbabwe, the focus should move from the individual to building democratic institutions.

Sisulu said: “We are like lobsters, we only cry out when it’s too late.”

Regional leaders have allowed three elections that were not free and fair to take place in Zimbabwe.

Many people had known what was happening in Mashonaland (in the 1980s, when the government was accused of killing 20 000 people).  “They did nothing about it.  Or excused it.  Robert Mugabe reduced it to a ‘moment of madness’,” she said.

It was the same when the Zimbabwean government openly beat up Dambutzo Marechera at the Writer’s Conference in Harare in 1999.  “Everyone witnessed it.  Nobody did anything.”

“Leaders need to be accountable.  And freedom of speech is a responsibility that the public should exercise.

“Media freedom is a matter of life and death.  We should be raising our voices,” said Sisulu.

Mutasah said that “South Africa needs to play a progressive role in line with their democracy post-1994.”  He questioned President Thabo Mbeki for attending an unveiling of manuscripts that was discovered in Timbuktu recently, while ignoring the crisis that exists in Zimbabwe.

“Is this the renaissance we want if people are being brutalised across the water and we are not doing anything about it?” he said.

The crowd was murmuring their agreed with the sentiments expressed by Mutasah whilst expressing their disagreeing with Ncube’s idea that Zanu-PF’s leadership still has anything to offer the country. 

When the lights failed to come on during the question and answer session, Sisulu used the opportunity to say that “Zimbaweans have been conducting conversations without lights for a long time.”

Friday, August 3, 2007

SDLU – building the leaders of tomorrow

ERICA DREIJER

STUDENTS from different backgrounds attended the Student Development and Leadership Unit (SDLU) Winter Camp in the Magaliesberg last weekend.

The camp forms part of a new service that the University has created to ensure that graduates will also have the necessary life skills to make a success of their lives.

The SDLU was created this year in response to a finding that students often lacked essential life skills to survive in the “real world”. 

The main purpose of the camp was to allow students to gain the necessary skills to transform from “a student today” to “a leader tomorrow”.

As one students who attended the camp said:  “Through this camp I was empowered with all the tools I need to make a success of myself ….from here I can only go forward.” 

Fifty students attended the camp.  They were recruited based on the reasons they gave as to why they thought they needed to attend the camp and not on their academic background. 

The camp was the first in its kind hosted by the University and served as a pilot for future camps.  The plan is to turn this into an annual event.

Different tools were used to create an active and practical learning environment to help ensure that students got the most from the weekend session.

The SDLU provides a substitute learning programme outside classes and is regulated by the National Association of Student Development (NASDEV).

NASDEV is the umbrella body for staff serving student development to ensure that well-rounded and educated citizens are created at tertiary institutions.  It is accredited by the Department of National Education.

The SDLU is headed up by Lamese Abrahams and was formed to serve the student community and the SRC.

The main areas identified by the unit are training and development, arts, culture and recreation, events and student promotions and student governance.

The programme also seeks to design custom-make courses to address different needs that are identified by various groups. 

Another initiative undertaken by the SDLU was to take students to the the recent National Arts festival in Grahamstown. 

The purpose was to get students more interested in arts and culture by providing them with an experience that they would not forget.

Two members from SDLU and 17 students travelled by bus to the festival where students were free to explore Grahamstown and the festival in whichever way they pleased.  They attended shows, visited flea markets, went clubbing and covered the town by foot. 

“It was an amazing experience.  There were a variety of things to do and see and do,”said Zanele Mtsahazo.

And as Richard Couperthwaite said:  “On the whole, the festival was an experience that I will not easily forget, and something that I would like to do again.”

* The SDLU shares space with the SRC on the second floor of the Matrix and can be contacted on 011-717 9204.

Friday, August 3, 2007

Campus Celebrity:  Disa Magwentshu

DISA MAGWENTSHU (19) is captain of the Wits women’s first hockey team and a second-year B.Comm student.  ERICA DREIJER got to know her a little better.

How long have you been playing hockey for?

I started playing it in high school, in standard six.  I have always enjoyed my sport and fell in love with hockey.

Do you participate in any other sport?

I play a bit of tennis and used to play tennis at school but play it more at a social level these days. I also play golf but haven’t been on the course for a while.  I enjoy sport and the outdoors.  I like abseiling too.  But I don’t do it often.  It’s a challenge and it’s a lot of fun.  I first did it at a leadership camp.

What do you like to do in when you socialise?

I am sports junkie.   That does it for me.  I like going out with my friends.  We go out most weekends on Fridays or Saturdays or both evenings.  At hockey we get to socialise after the games with our own team and other teams.  Though we try to stay away from making our hockey our social lives.

What would you like to do after you complete your degree?

As part of my degree I am doing Marketing and Information Systems.  I am leaning more towards Information Systems at the moment and am thinking of becoming a systems analyst.  But you never know what you really end up doing until you get out there.  I enjoy working with new technology and I like the business side too.  Being a systems analyst will allow me to match the two.  However, I am not a techno monkey.

What do you do in your free time?

Uhm, what do I do?  I guess I just like chilling with friends.  Watch TV, watch sport on television.  Watch movies. I just finished the latest Harry Potter.  I have read all those books and enjoyed them all.  This one was just as good.  People kept on wanting to tell me what was going to happen.  Having read it I wasn’t disappointed.  That’s what I did with my free time last week.

What are your dreams and aspirations?

I suppose [laughs] graduating for one.  Hopefully with honours.  I hope to be successful, whatever that means.  Whether its hockey or my career.  Ideally in both.

What’s your life philosophy?

I guess, just have fun whatever you are doing.  Don’t do things for the sake of doing them.  Enjoy it.

Friday, August 3, 2007

Wits scores with new coach
 
ERICA DREIJER

ALDO VAN DEN BERG (29), who was part of the Easterns team that won the Supersport Series under Ray Jennings, has taken up a player-coach appointment at Wits and will attend his first training session on Tuesday.

Van den Berg is determined to see Wits players compete for places at a provincial and national level.

“By fine-tuning mental and playing skills I feel confident that I can help players get to the next and higher levels of the game,” he said.

Van den Berg said that as a professional cricketer he understands the value of winning and competing at the highest levels. “But I also want to also make a difference in the lives of all players, regardless of the natural ability, by helping them improve their skills.”

He will take responsibility for all cricket teams at Wits and believes this will enable him to identify talent in the lower teams as well as attract new talent to the game.

“I also want to inject new interest and enthusiasm into the Wits social cricket scene. This will open up the sport to those that want to play for fun rather than competitively,” he said.

Cricket has been a part of Van den Berg’s life from a young age. He started playing as a professional straight from school and also travelled to England where he played country cricket to for Nottingham, Lancashire and Dorset.

In South Africa he has 34 first-class caps under his belt for Transvaal, Easterns and more recently the Pumas.

Ray Jennings has been a major influence in his playing career and how he approaches coaching.

“Although Ray is sometimes a little unorthodox, get gets results,” he said.
Van Den Berg switched from playing to coaching cricket far sooner than he thought he would.

“I never gave coaching much consideration.  I used to think that I would play cricket until I was a 100. But once I got a taste of coaching, it changed my thinking. Now I love it. I get a lot of joy and satisfaction from seeing players improve,” he said.

Currently Van den Berg also coaches schools cricket at Alberton High, where he is employed on a fulltime basis, and at the Hall Academy.

Van den Berg describes himself as a “positive person” who “grew up in a culture where you always give a 110%.”  He hopes to also instil these values through his coaching.

Friday, August 3, 2007

Wits volleyball team to compete in the Gauteng League

ERICA DREIJER

WITS’ women’s and men’s volleyball teams will start their campaign in the Premier Division of the Gauteng League after being promoted from Developing Division. 

Their first match will be held at Hall 29 on West Campus on Saturday at 11am. 

Both teams finished in the top three positions of the Developing Division which secured them the promotion. 

Last month both team participated in the Student Sports Union Tournament held at the University of the Western Cape in which they came in eighth position. 

The men’s team managed to make it to the quarter finals in a tournament that featured 21 teams.

Friday, August 3, 2007

Tens Witsies to star at student games

ERICA DREIJER

WITS will be sending ten students to compete in the upcoming Universiade that will be hosted in Bangkok.

The Universiade, derived from university and Olympiad, it is an Olympic Games for students and is second to it in sporting importance.

The students that will attending include:  Juliane Weber and Aleksandar Popovic (volleyball); Thami Kukulela (basketball); Ross Ferguson and Odette Richard (gymnastics); Allerdyce Fulton, Natasha Glassford, Coenraad van Tonder and Sally Buckton (judo) and Oteng Tlapeng (table tennis).

The Universiade, governed by the International University Sports Federation, is hosted every two years.

Over seven thousand athletes from 200 countries are expected to participate this year in a wide range of sports like athletics, football, swimming, tennis and water polo.

It will be taking place from Wednesday, August 8, 2007 until August 18.

Friday, August 3, 2007