The Australian journalism vs cultural studies debate: implications for South African media studies

ABSTRACT

This article describes an investigation into factors required for a development programme in intercultural business communication amongst the personnel of a South African company operating in the Japanese market. Drawing from items that were identified in the literature, and amongst individuals who operate in the Japanese market, a set of criteria was identified that could be included in a South African-Japanese intercultural business communication course. These criteria were used in a structured questionnaire, which was pre-tested in interviews and a focus group, and then administered to a group of company managers who had travelled to Japan on business. The results of the research are a set of items ranked in terms of salience within three categories. The first comprises degree of knowledge of important aspects of Japanese life, the second consists of factors that lead to culture shock, and the third includes aspects that are deemed to be important in a course on South African–Japanese intercultural business communication.     

Die bindende rol van die nasionale pers in die Suid-Afrikaanse samelewing

SUMMARY

Although “science” involves both theory and practice the significance of theory is often questioned in the field of communication studies. Some practitioners, for example, maintain that they need very little, if any, theory since their publics demand “results” and are not interested in theoretical debates. In similar vein it is argued that university students do not know how “to do the job” when they enter the field of communication practice. This article sets out to clarify some of the misunderstandings concerning the nature and role of theory in scientific practice and to show the need for a better understanding and closer cooperation between theorists and practitioners. Apart from suggesting a useful definition of theory for the purposes of the discussion, some common misconceptions concerning theory are addressed. It is argued that communicologists will only succeed in playing a meaningful role in a new South Africa if theorists and practitioners critically assess their own as well as each other's contributions and actively seek ways to cooperate in addressing critical issues in communication within the South African context. The article concludes with a discussion of some pressing problems currently experienced in the teaching of communication theory and offers some guidelines for selecting and presenting theory curricula relevant to communication and communication practice within the changing South African context.     

Representations of crime,power and social decay in the South African post-colony in the film Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema (2008)

The film Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema, released on August 29, 2008, decries the proliferation of crime, violence and social decay in the South African post-colony. The aim of this article is to interrogate the banality in the use of violence and power in the South African post-colony. The filmic narratives of Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema reveal that behind the ‘rainbow’ façade presented by South Africa, one encounters festering poverty in ‘non-white’ communities, racial acrimony, broken promises, social and class struggles, and tales of betrayal of the majority of black people by the elite black leadership which now sit comfortably in the seats vacated by their former colonisers. An analysis of the narratives of the film Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema permits one to locate apartheid-based economic disparities as still haunting mainly ‘non- white’ local communities, although some whites have not been spared by the vicious new normal of poverty and the effects of corruption. This interpretation is further questioned in the film which shows that, after apartheid, the nationalist leadership encouraged a negative culture of entitlement. The irony in the film is that the masses are also tainted in so far as they commit crimes against other ordinary people and refuse to take responsibility or, rather in an escapist way, blame all the woes of the post-colony on apartheid. Thus, the narratives of Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema beg the question: What is going wrong with the dream of democracy for all, irrespective of race, that was the founding principle of the new nation?     

ESP as a means of communication

SUMMARY

Although the obstacles to communication and cooperation between the widely divergent groups in South Africa is formidable, there is a genuine desire to live together peacefully in our common fatherland.

Intercultural contact in the South African labour situation is a very complex phenomenon but is important because this is virtually the only area of South African society in which Black and White in particular, come into close contact with one another.

Typical intercultural problem areas in the organisation are: cultural differences, differing circumstances of life, system defects and grievances, high potential for conflict, and other communication stumbling blocks.

The essential conditions for intercultural communication are availability, willingness and purpose, to which the following aspects can be added: continuing communication; creation of common ground; adoption of the right attitude and creation of trust; visualisation of a common purpose; knowledge of the other, knowledge of the other's language; training; use of the right communication channels; knowing how to deal with trade unions, work committees, etc.; good supervision; consideration of unique needs and expectations; and other hints, most of which have basically to do with sensitivity and just good manners.

South Africans have to cope with unique challenges and therefore will have to envisage and develop an indigenous South African organisational style in which the best both cultures have to offer, are accommodated.     

The remythologisation of white collective identities in post-apartheid South African film by myth and counter myth

Abstract

Since 1994 a collection of films, referred to here as post-apartheid South African history film, has thematically represented South Africa's apartheid history, and in so doing has engaged with the representation of the white figure in ways which suggest a reformulation of collective South African white identity construction. Part of this process is the phenomenon of the remythologisation, or the counter myth construction, of whiteness as an identity on film. Such mythic representations frequently describe the white figure as connected to aspects of guilt (whether individual or collective), remorse and forgiveness. Often the mythic construction of whiteness on film is delivered in a seemingly oversimplified binary fashion, reducing the representation of white identity in the post-apartheid South African situation to one that is robbed of complexities and nuances.     

Subversive semiotics and ironic anchorage on Vrye Weekblad covers: A visual analysis

Abstract

The apartheid-era Afrikaans press's compliance with apartheid politics and ideology is commonly recognised. This article investigates the newspaper Vrye Weekblad as an exception in this regard. A reading is made of four selected Vrye Weekblad front covers, through a qualitative visual semiotic analysis based on a Barthesian model, in order to describe the covers’ subversive and anti-apartheid tendencies. This analysis reveals that the subversive tendencies at work on the covers represent an open assault on the ruling National Party's (NP) norms and values, especially in terms of the bastions of apartheid Afrikaner nationalism, such as traditional reformed Christian beliefs, symbols of Afrikaner patriotism, concepts of racial purity and white ethnic superiority. The myths present on these covers, while functioning to undermine dominant ideologies, also naturalise an ideology of Vrye Weekblad's own, by creating alternative myths of a critical disposition towards the NP government. The subversive encoding of these covers stems from an ironic tension in anchorage between the conventional connotations associated with the cover images and their accompanying text, which undermine the dominant meanings of the images. This article seeks to contribute a theorisation of this ironic anchorage as a mode of encodification within the broader context of mythical representational practices. The author proposes that as these Vrye Weekblad covers were published under much the same uncertain circumstances as are experienced today with the African National Congress's (ANC) looming Protection of Information Bill and Media Appeals Tribunal, one might see the same occurrence of subversion through ironic anchorage in the contemporary South African media.     

The South African telecommunications environment: a brief assessment of regulatory change

Abstract

Communications play a critical role in transforming society. Governments as the custodians of communications therefore have a serious obligation to ensure that all the people of their country have access to basic telecommunications services. Access to basic communication services is a right because communications is an enabler of social interaction across time and geographic space, a creator of economic development and prosperity for even the most dispersed populations. In South Africa, under apartheid, vast populations of people were excluded from this basic right of having access to communications, resulting in a serious backlog of basic communication services. One of the major objectives of the Afican National Congress (ANC) government when it came to power in 1994 was to ensure that communications were made available to all people even those in the most remote areas of South Africa. These objectives were constrained by a number of factors such as: telecommunications policy that favoured a monopolistic telecommunications environment. To re-engineer the South African telecommunications landscape, telecommunications policy has since 1994 evolved in a revolutionary way.     

Steve Biko as existentialist communicator

Abstract

Despite ongoing interest and reflection on the work and ideas of Stephen Bantu Biko (1946–1977) in South Africa, no scholarly contribution from a communicological perspective has been published yet. While Biko regarded himself first and foremost as a freedom fighter who aimed to topple the apartheid regime, many regard him more as a philosopher – perhaps an ‘organising philosopher ’ or a sort of ‘social and political philosopher ’ as Sono (1993, 90ff.) puts it. More (2008, 64) goes further and argues that Biko, in his writings, displays a definite philosophical outlook, ‘an Africana existentialist preoccupation with “being-black-in-an-antiblack-world” and [a preoccupation with] questions of “black authenticity ” and “black liberation”’. The main aim of the article is to consider whether Biko as communicator makes human communication as a mode of existence come alive. Biko never addressed the problematic nature of human communication directly. The article concludes that Biko may be regarded as a foremost existentialist communicator during apartheid South Africa, and that his thoughts on meaningful and authentic existence remain relevant for confronting the vexing challenges facing contemporary South African communities.     

BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS … BOEKAANKONDIGINGS

SUMMARY

• In this article a number of general principles and practical tasks awaiting South African publishers are discussed by Andries Walter Oliphant, editor of Staffrider. Some of the points discussed are:

• the need for all South African publishers to underwrite non-racist democratic values;

• the need for South African publishers to advocate and defend the right of the reading public to have access to all published material and information;

• the need for publishers to counter the history of injustice, ignorance, racial prejudice and oppression by exposing and criticising any manifestation of it in society, the state and the media; and

• to give space to subordinate classes, such as workers and gender groups, to articulate their interests and conceptions of what freedom and social justice might mean to them.

     

Media,citizenship and the politics of belonging in contemporary South Africa

Abstract

Drawing on a wide range of theoretical and empirical studies, the articles in this special issue examine issues of citizenship and belonging in South Africa. Questions of belonging and citizenship are neither novel, nor particular to South Africa – they have been high on the intellectual (and popular) agenda internationally since at least the early 1990s. Yet South Africa's history of artificially separating and defining its citizens in the racial regimes of colonialism and apartheid still reverberates today, as is reflected in the continued inequalities marring South African society. Post-apartheid governance of redress still requires the use of apartheid categories of ‘race’, but the terms under which we understand what it means to be South African are much wider, and require continued critical reflection. Using South Africa (and not the global North, as is so often the case) as the focal point for rethinking notions of citizenship and belonging, may urge us to rethink these notions and their meanings within fledgling democracies and societies in transition.     

A model of international and intercultural communication

International and intercultural communication and their respective cognate constructs, political international and cultural international communication, are redefined and interrelated in order to create a clearer definitional base for theory building in communication among nations and peoples. International communication is any symbolic interaction between people of different nation states. Political international communication is politically significant symbolic internation between nation states. Intercultural communication is communication between people of different cultures in which cultural values are an obvious factor in the nature of the interaction and/or determining the outcome of the interaction. Cultural international communication is intercultural communication between people of different nation states. There are four advantages of this model over existing constructs. The model: (1) unifies yet distinguishes among each different type of communication (2) focuses attention on political significance (3) separates cultural international from intercultural communication (4) argues that international communication is inherently persuasive and that intercultural communication is an interpersonal transaction.     

From nipples and nationalists to full frontal in the new South Africa: An abridged history of pornography and censorship in the old and new South Africa

ABSTRACT

This article examines the ways in which the South African apartheid regimes approached and dealt with the question of pornography as well as how and why these measures changed after the birth of the new South Africa. Pornography in all its various forms, as an expression of human sexuality, is at once directly and indirectly attached to the freedom of speech and expression. This freedom lies at the very crux of democracy. During the apartheid era, the National Party governments dealt with the issues of pornography, erotica and indeed the expression of human sexuality through a particularly conservative system of regulations and bureaucratic structures. This was replaced, in the New South Africa, with a particularly liberal system. The varied reasons, at once apparent and totally obscure, for both the existence of the old and the creation of the new systems lay at the very heart of apartheid and at the crux of that which replaced it. This article examines how and why the apartheid governments viewed and handled this issue in the way they did and why it was dramatically changed in the new South Africa. The timeline of the article is from the 1890s to the current day.     

Racial appropriation in white expatriate South African discourses: Reading race on social club websites

Abstract

In South Africa the African moral philosophy ubuntuism is periodically raised as a framework for African normative media theory. At this stage, the ubuntu discourse cannot be described as a focused effort to develop a comprehensive theory on the basis of which media performance could be measured from ‘an African perspective’. It should rather be seen as an intellectual quest to rediscover and re-establish idealised values of traditional African culture(s) and traditional African communities. Yet, given South Africa's history of apartheid in which Christian nationalism was misused as a moral philosophy to mobilise a patriotic media in the service of volk (nationhood) and vaderland (fatherland), it is not too early to ask critical questions about ubuntuism as a possible framework for normative media theory. Such questioning is the purpose of this article. Against the background of postmodern and postcolonial perspectives on normative theory, questions related to the following are raised: the expediency of ubuntuism in the context of changed African cultural values, the distinctiveness of ubuntuism as an African moral philosophy, the vulnerability of moral philosophy to political misuse, ubuntuism in the context of the future of normative theory in a globalised world and changed media environment, and the implications of ubuntuism for journalism practice. It is concluded that ubuntuism may pose a threat to freedom of expression. Given the nature of contemporary South African society and its media system, the postmodern emphasis on diversity and pluralism as the cornerstone of future normative theory, is supported.     

Speak ill of me … but speak,or How to be Afrikaans on the SABC

Abstract

The elections of 1994 marked the beginning of a full-scale restructuring of the broadcasting sector in South Africa. Apart from changes related to ownership, editorial content, the media's position within society at large and its relationship to the government of the day, South African media have also undergone massive changes in terms of their languages of communication and the faces that are seen and heard. These changes were steered, in part, by debates on language equity and identity in South Africa. The politics of language equity in broadcasting reform has been shaped by conflicts over the legitimacy of who is represented, by what means, by whom and for what purposes. Afrikaans especially came under fire because of its privileged position before 1994. While the transition of South Africa to an inclusive democracy in 1994 freed Afrikaans from its apartheid shackles, it also made it one of only 11 official languages (Giliomee 2004: 25). The resultant debates about the position and status of Afrikaans – including that of speakers of Afrikaans – have intensified during the almost two decades post-apartheid. This article explores these discourses to establish the position of Afrikaans and its speakers as far as the South African Broadcasting Corporation is concerned.     

Rethinking media diversity policy on the community press in South Africa

ABSTRACT

It has been well acknowledged by historians of South African media that the country had a vibrant grassroots community press under apartheid, which declined with the advent of democracy. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) has supported media diversity in its media policy and has also criticised the supposedly anti-transformative nature of mainstream agenda-setting press. It has called for a range of measures to counteract this problem, including media diversity and intensified support for community media. However, apart from the establishment of the Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA), in its practices in government, the ANC has adopted a market-driven approach to the development of the sector, leaving questions of market structure to the Competition Commission and Tribunal. Evidence from the community press suggests that this approach, which amounts to an adaptation to neoliberalism, but with a public service top-up, is inadequate to the task of realising diversity. As a result, the community press is facing deep crisis. The article will then consider why the ANC has adopted an incoherent, even contradictory approach to press diversity, and what policy measures are needed to encourage the sorts of vibrant community press that a democratic South Africa needs.     

Yesterday,AIDS and structural violence in South Africa

ABSTRACT

This article is based on a reading of the South African film Yesterday, which deals with the topic of ? AIDS. In the discourse analysis of the film text, the role of signs – verbal, visual and aural – in constructing meaning is examined, as well as the effect of different filming techniques. The film is then related to the broader South African socio-political context. The writer considers how representative Yesterday is of the AIDS situation in South Africa, a question which necessitates going beyond the film text and considering actual events in South Africa, past and present, as well as referring to other relevant examples of AIDS-related discourse.     

The right to broadcast: towards a broadcasting charter for South Africa

SUMMARY

In this article Michael Markovitz, chairman of the Broadcasting Commission of the Film and Allied Workers Organisation (FAWO) argues:

• that present broadcasting statutes restrict access to the technological means of communication in South African society which prevails now;

• that broadcasting is an issue of national and constitutional importance;

• that the deregulation of broadcasting, with protection or non-profit broadcast services, could benefit the negotiation process;

• that private sector domination of both the broadcasting and print media sectors would be incompatible with the extension of freedom of expression in South Africa;

• that prevailing broadcasting legislation effectively prohibits community broadcasting; and

• that the right to broadcast and broadcast freedom should be entrenched in a Bill of Rights.

     

Towards linking normative theory,communication policy and audiences in South African communication research

Abstract

In this article the need to revisit South African normative media theory and communication policy against the background of fundamental audience research is emphasised. This is done in view of the postmodemist argument that ‘classic’ normative media theory is no longer suitable as a yardstick for the measurement of media performance, quality and ethics in postmodern societies, in a changing media landscape. Bearing in mind that South Africa cannot be fully characterised as a postmodernist and advanced capitalist society, but based on the nature of its First World media system functioning in a multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic society, the tendency to see ubuntuism as a point of departure for such revision is questioned. This is done in favour of an approach in which difference and diversity are acknowledged, including the different roles the media can play and the different forms in which it can (and do) contribute to social responsibility. As far as policy research is concerned, it is emphasised that such research should be based on normative theory about the role of the media in South African society. If not, South African communication policy will continue to be fragmented and responsive to mainly technological developments and opportunities, instead of being based on communicative goals and needs. This article concludes by emphasising that both normative theory and policy should be based on fundamental audience research, which is argued to be neglected in South African communication research.     

Communication technology and development: can South Africa afford the information explosion?

ABSTRACT

Weare living in a world where the availability of information can make you, or the lack of it can break you. The 'information explosion', as it is sometimes called, has already changed our lives. How this affects us, and changes our environment, our economy and our lives is a fascinating issue. But does it affect everyone? Is there a possibility that some communities can be left in the dark without the availability of these masses of information?

In South Africa some major changes are taking place at the moment. It could be argued that while South Africa tries to erase the remains of apartheid and rebuild the country, the rest of the world has 'quietly' moved into the information age. A development problem in South Africa concerns the disparities among the different communities. There is still a significant difference between the information-rich, a small minority, and the information-poor, the majority of the population.

This article first describes the situation in South Africa with regard to Internet availability and accessibility and secondly gives a broad overview of the theoretical assumptions underlying computer-mediated communication from a communication sciences perspective. In conclusion, specific questions on the topic for future research in communication sciences are proposed in general and applied to conditions in South Africa as a developing country.     

The story of the larger grain borer: Communicating Science to Rural Communities

Abstract

Although the democratisation of science was prioritised after the South African democratic elections of 1994, thus, promoting dialogue, transparency and consultation, communication with rural communities remains a challenge in South Africa. Because of the diverse cultural landscape of the country, aspects such as language, traditions and poverty impact significantly on the facilitation of communication and the dissemination of information, particularly in rural communities.

The South African government's quest to build a better future for all South Africans places renewed emphasis on the role of ‘development’ and the use of communication to meet the future challenges of ‘development for all’.

The purpose of this article is, firstly, to explore the development communication media used in the community awareness programme of the National Department of Agriculture of South Africa in the town of Makutu, Mpumalanga Province, and, secondly, to investigate and offer an assessment of the communication approach followed by the National Department of Agriculture. In this article the scene is set with a brief overview of development communication models and a discussion of different types of media and methods available for communicating with rural communities. A case study on an awareness project launched by the National Department of Agriculture is presented and the article concludes with an assessment of the case study against the theoretical overview presented in the first section of this article to determine the communication approach followed, and communication media and methods used.

A case study on The Larger Grain Borer (LGB), a quarantine insect pest of maize that has left a path of destruction through Africa, forms the basis of this article. The Directorate: Plant Health and Quality of the National Department of Agriculture of South Africa initiated this awareness project to empower farmers through awareness and education to prevent the spread, and to manage the impact, of the pest. It is believed that the key to rural food security lies in the country's ability to effectively disseminate information to rural communities.