Throughout the first semester I will be tutoring a group of second year radio students. During this time I will be assisting them in the creation of a magazine show called 'mabaleng', which focuses on how successful sports societies at Rhodes University are with community engagement. This page will contain highlights of the work produced by the students under my leadership and guidance.
Mabaleng- The Show Concept
‘Mabaleng’ will be a show investigating the extent to which Rhodes University sports societies engage with the community. I felt the title ‘Mabaleng’ was an appropriate one, as it is a Sotho phrase meaning ‘at the fields’. At the fields obviously links to sporting participation, and the fact that the phrase is Sotho represents the idea of engaging with different cultural backgrounds.
I believe this will work well as a show concept, as the idea originated from a discussion I heard about the netball club’s involvement with the community. It used to be one of the most successful societies in ‘giving back’, but now due to lack of funds, they aren’t able to be as involved as they used to be. This opened up opportunities for various investigations. Why has this happened? Is this vindicative of other sports societies? Our task is then to examine how successful sports societies are by comparing various societies, and finding out from the community itself what they think of Rhodes sports societies contributions.
With this in mind, I believe it fits well into the programme brief. It creates a bridge between Rhodes and the community, by conducting a two way investigative and evaluative approach as explained above. I hope that this is informative not only to the Rhodes students as a way to get more involved with the community, but to the community, by addressing what Rhodes have been doing, and what they hope to do in order to reach out. I also hope that this will spark debate; it could create a subjective assessment of how involved Rhodes is. Questions that might be left for the audience to answer themselves could be- will the sports societies be able to put into practice what they promise to achieve with the community? Can the sports societies continue to be successful? What will the community think if they don’t? This then illustrates the potential for this show to be compelling and exciting.
Mabaleng- The Final Show
On the 3rd of June, Mabaleng's final show was aired on RMR. Here is the half hour show.
