For the last four months, reporters Thanduxolo Jika and Theo Jeptha investigated the unabated spate of attacks and killings on the Somali community living in East London and the Eastern Cape, South Africa, for South Africa's newspaper the Daily Dispatch.

Apart from print, Jika and Jeptha worked closely with the DispatchOnline team to produce a comprehensive online package, "Dying to Live," which details the lives of Somalis living on the southeast coast of Africa.

The story, which was made possible thanks to the Taco Kuiper Fund for Investigative Journalism at Wits University, is one of a community living on the fringes of society all around the continent where they have fled to escape the horrors of their own war-torn country, Somalia.

It is also the story of one such a Somali community, who came to South Africa hoping to find a better life - but finding in return that the even charitable don't want them here. And the uncharitable want them dead...

Below, Online News Editor Jan Hennop walks you through the various elements of the online package:

Using WordPress vers. 2.6.5, we built a custom theme for the landing page and using a quote from a convicted murderer and a picture of a Somali man praying, we hopefully created a powerful image that will draw online readers into the page.

Continuing in WordPress, we set up a number of categories leading off the home page:

Daily blog diary, written by Thanduxolo Jika: For two weeks at the start of February, Jika and Theo Jeptha lived with two Somali friends in Mdantsane township's notorious NU1 area. Here, they shared living space with the Somali traders as they brought much-needed goods to the poorest-of-the-poor, while constantly living with the fear of being attacked. They share some of the most intimate moments in the mens' lives as they struggle to eke out a daily existence. They also speak to other members of the Somali community who have lost relatives or have been injured in attacks.

Stories: This category is for stories as they appear in print, as well us putting up Tuesday's front page of the paper. The story category, includes an interview with convicted killer Andile Tunzana, who went on a rampage with his gang on 5 July 2005, robbing four Somali-owned shops - killing two men and wounding several others.

Pictures: Having a current shortage of decent software (which we are only getting in the new financial year) we used Windows Movie Maker for pics combined with sound edited on Audacity to put together two slideshow packages. The packages were then posted up to Youtube and embedded into WordPress using the tag "httpvh:" function, which gives a larger-sized slideshows in WordPress. Another great new function in WordPress are picture galleries, which are equally simple to embed.

Video: We simply embedded video clips with some of the blog posts in the blog diary and marked them with this category.

Audio: An interesting part of the website, where convicted killer Andile Tunzana speaks to Thanduxolo Jika in prison. The interview is recorded in isiXhosa, the African language spoken by people living in this part of South Africa. A written transcript of the interview is available, but we plan in future to also make a voice-over audio transcript available. Jika also interviews the killer's mother and how she refuses to talk to her son.

Map: Using Google Maps, we built a comprehensive interactive map, detailing the killing spree of convicted killer Andile Tunzana and his gang as they rampaged through Duncan Village on July 5, 2005, attacking Somali-owned shops. The attack remains one of the most brutal assaults on the Somali community to date. We embedded video, audio as well as images, including those from the police case docket in some of the clickable icons on the map. We also posted court documents on our server, detailing the case of Andile Tunzana, as well as a picture of the killer.

Timeline: Using Dipity, we embedded a timeline on this page, in which we detail a history of all the attacks on Somali residents since 2005, the year when many of them started arriving in the country.

Finally, we also tell the story of the South African government's failure to protect a defenseless community and how the only way to get somewhere is through bribery and corruption.

Like it or not, this is also a story showing the other side of Somalia - where decent citizens like Abdirizak Mahdi and Adam Malow - just want to be treated like ordinary people - and not be painted through "Black Hawk Down"-tinted glasses, or through the image of Somali pirates off the African coast.

While doing the story, a newsroom colleague mentioned the often-quoted sonnet "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus, which appears on the inside of the Statue of Liberty's pedestal:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Looking at our stories and our own xenophobia, we have cleary failed as a South African society.

We would love your comments and criticisms.   

- Jan Hennop, Online News Editor, Daily Dispatch, East London, South Africa