Whine into Water - radical journalism

Although all the JMS students were emailed by Rod to inform us about the JMS3 presentations that happened on Wednesday night I made sure that I went (even though I had an extremely long politics tutorial to complete) as one of my oldest friends is in JMS3 and therefore her group’s campaign was presented. She is in the Whine into Water group that used a radical journalism approach to try and create awareness on water quality and the Kowie River Campaign. Their campaign used the slogan “Out of Order” which was placed on numerous toilets within the Journalism department as well as in many residences on campus (including mine). Needless to say chaos and confusion ensued as people could not understand why so many bathrooms were ‘out of order’. Some people even got upset which I would think was the whole point - to achieve a reaction of outrage from the general public. That there are people in the Grahamstown area that do not even have running water is unacceptable. The posters that they used with the slogan “The ass end of the water” refers to the terrible quality of water that we have been receiving and is aimed at creating awareness. They even had a water point set up outside Pick ‘n Pay where they asked people to taste water from two different sources to see if there was a difference.
I really enjoyed their approach to the issue of water and water quality awareness as it was unavoidable and demanded a reaction. I recommend that you all go check out their site and become more aware!