Almost a decade ago, while director of the visual journalism program at the University of North Carolina, my colleagues at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and I partnered with Dr. Guy Berger, then dean of the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University, on an experimental multimedia project looking at life in the townships surrounding Grahamstown, South Africa (Ten Years On) ten years after the end of Apartheid.
Although Prof. Berger is now the director of Freedom of Expression and Media Development at UNESCO and I am Professor and Knight Chair of Visual Journalism at the University of Miami, we decided to produce a follow-up project, 20 Years On, to document what life looks like for people living in the townships and informal settlements as we approach the 20th anniversary of the end of Apartheid.

We recruited students from The University of Cape Town, Cape Peninsula University of Technology (Cape Town), Durban University of Technology and the Big Fish School of Digital Film Making (Johannesburg) to join students from both Rhodes University and the University of Miami and gathered content in November 2012, June-August 2013 and January 2014 in Grahamstown, Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg. Brian Garman, Design Senior Lecturer at Rhodes, directed the project in South Africa and I directed the project from the U.S.

Vuyisani Moni & Adam Campbell
Vuyisani Moni & Adam Campbell

We were greatly assisted, by Nancy Donaldson, Senior Producer, Video at The New York Times, Evelio Contreras, Digital Content Producer/Editor at CNN, Beauregard Tromp, Visiting Knight Chair, University of Miami and former Senior Field Producer for E News Africa and graduate assistants Aubrey Aden-Buie and Qin Chen.