What are Grahamstown’s most pressing crime problems? How do residents feel about them? And how are these crime-related issues dividing our community? A group of 120 student journalists, assigned to ten clusters of neighbourhoods around town, took to the streets to converse with local residents, hold neighbourhood meetings to grapple with the issues, and produce various media that take an alternative view on crime in Grahamstown.

An introduction:

Crime stories make headlines in newspapers across the world every day. Routinely these stories are based on information reported to the police or criminal cases that are tried in the courts. It is not an exaggeration to state that most ‘mainstream’ crime reporting is concerned with the events of crime rather than the social, economic and political contexts in which these crimes take place.

In the context of contemporary South Africa, however, where crime remains a problem. It’s a problem not just because it is as prevalent as reflected in the statistics, but also because we often add to its effects by imagining a society even more fearful and dangerous that what is out there. These fears can change the kind of people we are and the world we live in. The routine reporting of crime has largely failed to engage communities in meaningful dialogue about crime and the impact of crime on public life. The result is that many South Africans feel disempowered by media reporting on crime, with their worst fears and prejudices confirmed by such reporting.

It is against this backdrop that the staff and students of the critical media production course in the third year of the Rhodes Journalism & Media Studies programme embarked on a project to explore an alternative approach to reporting crime in Grahamstown. This project culminated in ‘Mapping the Footprint of Crime,’ a series of special reports from ten clusters of neighbourhoods in town.

The student journalists, working in groups comprised of writers, designers, photojournalists as well as radio and television producers, worked closely with local residents by creating spaces for community dialogue, involving them in the production of their stories, and drawing on the residents’ experience to discuss community initiatives that could help alleviate the crime and crime-related problems experienced in different neighbourhoods.

The ten special reports contained here range from coverage of communities that have been divided by violent crimes to reporting on areas where the direct impact of crime appears to have been minimal but where the fear of crime has resulted in insular communities. In all of these reports, however, what should be evident are the ways that the student journalists and their community collaborators have worked towards generating a new dialogue about crime and discussion that seeks out solutions to the problem, rather than perpetuating the status quo.