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Each week, a group of bubbly South African teenagers gather in a studio to play hip-hop music and exchange views on the scourge of crime in the neighborhood for their community radio show.
For them, they are not distant subjects. The stories they discuss are terribly close to home for young broadcasters – the father of a reporter was shot on his birthday, while the other is the daughter of a reformed criminal armed.
The twenties teenagers who host Alex FM's weekly radio show "Bigger Than Life" is determined to help bring an end to the violence that affects so many lives in the township. Alexandra from Johannesburg, densely populated and struggling with crime.
"I can badure you that every child of Alexandra can be a living testament … every night, from Friday to Sunday, and sometimes even on weekdays, we always hear gunshots – that's as if it's Was still ", 16-year-old Jennifer Ngobeni, former radio host, told AFP.
Nicknamed "Gomorrah" after the sinful biblical city, Alexandra was home to Nelson Mandela in the early 1940s as he began his anti-apartheid campaign.
Today, it is an area affected by poverty of about 300,000 people, stricken by gang violence, unemployment and lack of health and social services. Basic education, with open sewers and landfills polluting its streets.
Every Saturday morning, members of the Bigger Than Life team discuss gun laws, develop their personal points of view, listen to interviews and listen to music before opening the phone lines of the 150 000 listeners of the station.
Co-host Michelle Selemela, a grade 11 student, said her father, who has been shunning crime and violence since he was released from prison, has encouraged her to get involved on the radio.
"The only thing I could see when I was young was that the police were looking for him," the 17-year-old told AFP. she conducted interviews and interviews on the local market.
"He is a better person now, helping me structure interviews and ask powerful questions."
"It becomes emotional"
The township community radio station, Alex FM, was established in 1994 – the year of the end of the apartheid regime of white minorities.
"Whenever we talk about gun violence, it becomes emotional in the studio," said Sammy Ramodike, technical trainer of the Children & # 39; s Radio Foundation (CRF).
"We have a young journalist by the name of Monica, his father was shot dead in armed violence and, unfortunately, on his birthday, his father was shot dead."
Alexandra is just five kilometers from Sandton, the city's skyscraper and luxury home business district – but poverty and danger are still there.
The settlement extends over seven square kilometers, a large number of bare brick houses and corrugated steel shacks lacking running water and electricity.
"We live in ideal conditions to commit and conceal crimes," said one enraged resident, pointing to the dark alleys between homes.
Nationwide crime statistics show that murders have increased since 2012, with nearly 57 deaths each day.
About one-third of those killed are killed by guns, according to GunFree SA, which supports the Alex FM radio show alongside the FIU.
According to a survey conducted in 2017, South Africa has at least two million illegal firearms and about three million legally registered firearms.
Speak
"Many South Africans say that they want guns for their own protection," said Mary-Ann Nobele, trainer at GunFree SA.
But she warned that the data showed that gun owners were four times more likely to be injured by their own weapon than using it to protect themselves.
The 20-year-old woman, herself a resident of Alexandra, helps teens with radio content.
"Young people are affected by armed violence in one way or another," she said.
"The youth's ownership of this media makes our problems and stories heard, so that other young people know that they are not the only ones crossing it."
The young radio volunteers speak of a culture of fear that reigns in the city and silences the inhabitants, fueling violence, victims reluctant to go to the police.
Radio host Ngobeni said that criminals earn money and then "become heroes in the community".
She said the feeling of insecurity is infiltrating into every home.
"You can never enjoy the joys of being alone at home," she said.
"You really have to lock your doors because someone could run to your house … they'll just open the door and enter."
But she hopes the radio show will have an effect. "When we talk about gun violence, people realize that it's not acceptable for someone to be killed."
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