Background of Area | Project Overview| Community Meeting | The Way Forward | ALL MULTIMEDIA

One of the most predominant aspects of public journalism is that, unlike regular journalism which is driven by hard facts and breaking news stories, public journalism seeks to embed itself within the community.  We spent time engaging with the residents of Extensions 6 to 9, finding stories and topics which are important to them.

With crime as our overarching theme, the material from this area was extensive.  This theme is considerably overworked and thus we needed to get to the core of the issue and find what had previously been missed. 

To put our plan into action, we needed to immerse ourselves in the community and really get to know the residents and the area.  We spent a lot of time in the Extensions, driving around and talking to locals on the street, in taverns, spaza shops and even in their houses to gauge what they find significant about crime in their area.

Through constant interaction, relationships with the Community Policing Forums the staff and youth at the Egazini Outreach Project we held a successful focus group where we further discussed crime, as well as a ‘crime stop’ initiative with the children of Egazini.

Through these endeavours, it quickly became apparent that the primary issue perpetuating crime in the Extensions 6 to 9 is the overwhelmingly strict code of silence, that is, the oppressive nature of crime, which forces residents to remain silent about crimes they have witnessed or been victim to.

Our group aimed to increase awareness of the importance of reporting crime by handing out information cards with important numbers on them, bumper stickers encouraging people to ‘blow the whistle on crime’, whistles to support the ‘break the silence’ initiative, DVDs containing a documentary and sound slides of brave community members who told their stories, and magazines where the issues of this silent community are shared.

A hand print, my signature against crime.


Getting involved with the youth of the community.


"This paint is messy!"


"It's everywhere!"


"This is how you make a hand print."