Farm sale kicks up dust

Highlight the issue of women and land ownership and policies around these issues.

How pertinent issues can be brought into event reporting to give the story a human interest angle.

The story highlights the abuse of elderly, illiterate women. These kinds of stories make the news time to time, suggesting that this is not a unique incident. Most of such stories emanate from the north of the country and this story, which is situated in the south of Namibia, highlights that these incidences take place all over the country.

Although the story is prominently placed in the front page lending it an air of importance, there are certain shortcomings:

Context: The story relies primarily on what seems to be court documents and the only person directly sourced and quoted is the governor of Kara region, who refers to the issue as racial discrimination. Even though the case might be sub judice and thus the women in question could not be interviewed, some kind of information on whether this is an isolated case or not, would have been necessary. Apart from the governor, women’s organisations in the region could have been interviewed to provide that kind of context.

 

Headlines: the headline, ‘Farm sale kicks up dust’ doesn’t really convey what the story is about. It is typical ‘conflict’ headline, often used in Namibia media, but the serious gender and racial inequalities that are at the heart of the story do not come out of the headline.

 

Language: language in the article is generally neutral but there is one confusing phrase, cited from a deed of transfer, which refers to the woman in question as ‘a major spinster’. No further explanation as to why this definition is used or what it means in this context is given. In terms of the o longer valid deeds registry terminology an unmarried woman had to be referred to as a major spinster. However, as the article does not explain that, it would have been better to leave the derogatory term out.

Divide the students into groups to discuss the following:

What are major land issues in your country? How are women placed in these issues?

How could the writer have contextualized the story?

What information is missing from the story?

Would it have been interesting to get views of men on land issues?

Encourage students to use sex disaggregated data by asking them to go out and interview men and women on the issue of land ownership in the country. Let them rewrite the story incorporating the findings from the interviews.