Education is a right, not a privilege!




The brave ones brave the wind and chill of June 16 2009 to march, hand out pamphlets and shout for better education.

FINGO HAS A NEW LIBRARY!!

[Courtesy Grocott's Mail artile at ]

Residents of Tantyi, Vukani and Fingo Village were in high spirits on Tuesday as they witnessed the opening of the first library in the area. The library extension was set up by the Cacadu District Municipality and is situated within the grounds of the Raglan Road Multi-purpose Community Centre. Unicef partnered up with the Eastern Cape Department of Social Welfare in identifying Raglan Centre as a demonstration site for early childhood development; and opening a library within its multi-faceted premises was a step forward in realising this goal.

.... This is a great resource for Fingo and we hope many of the young ones will make use of it.

BACK TO SCHOOL 2009

Fingo learners and pupils congregated at Jeki's corner in anticipation of the new school year. Prizes were given away, voices were heard... and the young made their presence felt...

PUBLIC EDUCATION THE FINGO REVOLUTIONARY WAY

Public education the Fingo Revolutionary way
by tsepiso sathie nzayo

The Fingo Revolutionaries Movement (F.R.M) went along with the back-to-school flow, but with a different approach.
Last Saturday F.R.M had its own “Back to school”event on the corner of Raglan road near J. Henry Chan (Kwa-Jeki). The aim was to encourage parents to have regular talks with their children and to get to know what is happening in their children's education.
“We are not strictly focusing on school-going children because F.R.M believes that school is not a secluded building where there is a teacher inside a classroom. Sharing information and engaging in issues and topics that affect children is also a part of education,” said Xolile (X-Nasty) Madinda.
The event was enlivened by Hip Hop, drama and dance, with the crowd of parents and children picking up the rhythms and applauding. Umngani, a poet-emcee from Joza township touched hearts with an emotional poem about his own life experiences. There was also a competition and prizes of colouring pens, maths sets, school bags and puzzles for the children.



X-nasty said his expectations for the event had been more than satisfied, especially by the response from the children. An appreciative Sinethemba Vamba (11) said, “It is nice to be here and I also had fun. Events like these help us to contribute to the society positively. I'm a dancer (pantsula) and this is a platform where we can showcase our talent.”
Mzukisi Cagweni (24) said people were so excited about the event that it should be held more often: “Events like these must not be done once in three months, they must be a continuous thing, as they help people to be creative.”



F.R.M members feel that the historic site should become a place that is geared for this type of event, where performers can communicate with the society through different art forms. They plan to discuss possible improvements to the site, such as a cement stage, with Makana Municipality.

DEFBOYZ & GRAHAMSTOWN HIP-HOP

Hello everyone!

Very soon we will be uploading some stuff on hip-hop in Grahamstown. Hip-hop is a strong grassroots force in Grahamstown and the Eastern Cape in general.

We've never really documented our stuff on the Internet but its about time.

For now, let it be known that Defboyz, one of the most enduring, politically conscious, hip-hop fanatics/ activists/ fundamentalists from Fingo, Grahamstown will be dropping their debut album in 2008.

Defboyz MC 'X' or 'X-nasty' (Xolile Madinda) is one of the founding members of the Fingo Revolutionary Movement. He's a social commentator who uses hip-hop to get the message across. Defboyz believe in hip hop as consciousness, hip-hop as food of life, hip-hop as good times ... yeah...

Check out the following interview X did with 24.COM in 2007 24.COM DEFBOYZ INTERVIEW
http://www.24.com/entertainment/music/?p=interview&i=791879

You can also visit Defboyz on Myspace listen to some of the rough cuts for what is to come... www.myspace.com/defboyzcrew

PEACE
F.R.S.M

BACK TO SCHOOL 2008!!

We will be hosting an education awareness campaign about the value of education, the problems and challenges of education within our community. We're calling it BACK TO SCHOOL.
26 JANUARY 2008 - KWA-JEKI INTERSECTION, FINGO... Free your mind black!

STEVE BIKO 30/30

2007 was the year in which we commemorated 30 Years since the death of Biko.
We organised two events for the community.

We successfully hosted the Steve Biko Commemmorative IsiXhosa Speech Competition with Rhodes University's African Language Studies.
The competition was open to all Grahamstown High School kids.

Click the link to read:
HERALD REPORT ON BIKO SPEECH COMPETITION 2007
http://www.theherald.co.za/herald/2007/09/19/news/n12_19092007.htm

The topic was simply on what the scholars felt the relevance of Steve Biko is today.

It was a wonderful memorable day where the standard of language use was very high.
And of course it was good to see all these young people speaking their minds so passionately and trying out their best.

We hope this event can go on in years to come.

The winning speech was by Mandilakhe Tukulu of Victoria Girls' High School.

One 16 September we kept it street-style by holding a street event in Fingo. There was drama, hip-hop, dance and poets. As usual we held dialogues and debate on Biko with prizes given.



FRSM