Learn more about Steve Biko

Visitors to the blog are encouraged to research Steve Biko on their own. Links to useful pages have been inserted and can simply be clicked on and it will open the relevant page.

The reason for this self-exploration is that no first-hand information could be found in Fingo Village about Steve Biko. Any information found on this blog would therefore be taken from foreign sources. This is not the ideal or the objective of a public history project. There is an abundance of information available on the life and work of Steve Biko. There is also the great 1987 film, Cry Freedom, about the life of Steve Biko.

Readers, or rather public history explorers, will find that doing their own investigation about Steve Biko will allow for a broader and deeper understanding about the driving forces behind his political aspirations and how he came to be the symbol of the Black Consciousness Movement. Steve Biko's legacy lives on today. His legacy is most noticeable on the Rhodes University campus throught the SASCO (South African Students Congress) society. Steve Biko was one of the founders of SASCO.

We want to encourage explorers to share any interesting things that they have learnt about Steve Biko on the blog. This can be done by posting comments or by contacting the producers of the blog (an email address can be found on the blog) and we will upload any information that readers of this blog want to share about the life and work of Steve Biko, or how they were personally influenced or inspired by him.

It is perhaps important to mention at this point that the purpose of a blog is for it to function as a journal, where regular postings can be made about events or thoughts or ideas. A blog is something that can be updated as frequently as any one group or individual chooses to update it.

As previously mentioned, this year (2007) marks the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Biko and special events will be held to commemorate his life. This will probably take place in Fingo Village and on the Rhodes campus. The event will hopefully be covered in this blog.

Project Design Report

It is important to view the making of a public history project as a process. It is not something that can be done without planning and regular evaluation. We, the producers of this blog, therefore thought that it might be interesting to include the report submitted to our supervisor on 18 May 2007 on the intended project design. The full report can be found below.

The Fingo Village Blog will be hosted on a free internet blogging site. The URL is http://www.blogger.com. The blog was very easy to set because it has various user-friendly tools to assist one in setting up a diary of this nature. A diary is essentially what a blog is but we are using it in a slightly different way. A blog allows for visitors to the site to make comments that will then appear on the blog. This feature of a blog assist us in our mission to make the blog something that is interactive and something that ordinary members of the community can participate in.

The design of the blog was chosen from a number of template options that are given to the user. We opted for a more elegant looking design. The reason for this is that is that way we hope that people will take the blog and the content, and other material found on it, quite seriously. By serious we do not mean academic, but rather that they will find honest, fair, balanced and well-researched historical discourse on the blog. The great thing about a blog is that there is no limit to the amount of space that can be used. While there is a limit to the amount of information that one can see on the computer screen, the blog automatically stores older information as new content is uploaded. The blog also allows for the inclusion of photographs or other graphics. Another resourceful feature is that one can insert links to other interesting or useful webpages. We intend making use of this as we see it as a way to entice and motivate people into learning more about this specific aspect of South African public history.

Every member of the group is able to upload content onto the blog on their own time. This is made possible by sharing the username and password that secures the blog. This is another useful feature because it means that the group is not forced to meet every time somebody wants to add something to the blog. The initial setting up required full group participation but now we will probably meet once or twice more to ensure that the overall tone and style of the blog is what we set out to do.

The blog allows for the users to include a profile about themselves. We filled in the profile part, describing how we are young historians at Rhodes University that are doing a public history project, that above everything else, will give something back to the community.

The general plan for implementation is easy because the groundwork has been done. Everybody had a part of the history of Fingo Village to investigate and write about and this will all be posted on the blog under various headings. The, very ambitious, plan is to have it all done and good to go by Saturday 19 May 2007 which is three days before the presentation of the project to our peers and lecturer. The presentation that will be done for the class will most likely be rehearsed the night before the presentation.

A ‘hook’ is always necessary to draw people into a project and to encourage them to participate in the experience. We are going to hand out little flyers that say very little apart from, ‘have you checked out this blog?’ and the web address. We think this is the most effective way of encouraging people to log onto the internet and view the blog because it makes them curious. If too much information is supplied about what is on the blog people might decide that they are not interested before even viewing it. Other hooks to be used will be striking and interesting headlines that draw people into the content. Photographs will also serve as a ‘hook’ as the visual medium serves to entice people in a different way than mere text does.

The costs involved in this project are minimal. The only costs that we have are the printing costs of the flyers and the petrol that was used to drive to Fingo Village to speak to members of the community.

As previously mentioned, a whole variety of sources will be employed. They range from peer-reviewed academic articles to interviews with people. Since it is a public history project, rather than a piece of academic work we thought to necessary to draw from a wide variety of knowledge to ensure that the content of the blog does not become stale or too theoretical. The other reason is to ensure that the blog becomes ‘the voice of the community’ in a sense. This is an all-inclusive history project, as in line with the democratic ideals of our country, and so no possible source will be discriminated against.