Anthea Garman

The meanings of citizenship: media use and democracy in South Africa

In 1994, South Africans embarked on a project to create new meanings of citizenship in order to transcend the disenfranchisement and divisions created by apartheid. This article examines the context in which new forms of citizenship are evolving in South Africa and how South African citizens use the media to give meaning to concepts such as “an active public sphere,” “civic agency” and “participatory politics.” The objective of the research is to provide information about the way in which the media contribute to the quality of democracy in South Africa through mediating citizenship in a way that improves prospects for citizens to exert influence over public decisions. As has been the case in other post-authoritarian and postcolonial settings, the continuation of existing unequal relationships to government persists even when new democratic spaces have opened up. This article interrogates the assumption that media are central to citizens’ political and civic engagements in a transitional society marked by persisting inequalities. This interrogation draws on empirical research with citizens to investigate the question that the media are central to constructions of citizenship and participation and engagement with democratic processes. Our research finds that young South Africans interviewed are disengaged from politics and find that the media does not speak to or connect with their everyday lives. They view the state on both national and local levels as not being prepared to listen to their experiences, ideas or conditions of life. While the respondents trust the media as credible institutions, they do not experience the media as being relevant to their lives. The perceived disinterest of the state and the lack of relevance of the media, work together to create a sense of powerlessness and inability to influence policy-making among the young people interviewed. For the media to intervene in this state of affairs, it would have to create more opportunities for young people to participate directly in meaning production through the media, starting by listening more closely to their experiences in order to respond to their concerns in a relevant way.

Confession and public life in post-apartheid South Africa : a Foucauldian reading of Antjie Krog's Country of My Skull

Summary Truth commissions around the world have given the technique of confession a new public currency and political power. Many works of literature thematising these commissions have also adopted the technique of confession for literary purposes. In this paper I bring Foucaults understanding of the technique of confession, and his discourse on the role of public intellectuals in modernity, to bear upon an examination of Antjie Krogs literary reflection of the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), entitled Country of My Skull (1998). I look at how this text, and Krogs subsequent public intellectual status as a witness of the TRC, perpetuate the technique of confession without problematising it in ways that Foucaults work would suggest is necessary.

Antjie Krog and the accumulation of 'media meta-capital'

Abstract While Krogs significant body of work in poetry, prose and journalism is undoubtedly central in her trajectory towards international renown, in this essay I explore the dynamics of her “meteoric rise in status”. The news medias role in mediating Krog to the world for nearly 40 years becomes crucial to this investigation. I use a mix of media theory and field theory to illuminate the multi‐faceted and complex relationship Krog has had with the news media and I argue that her acquisition of ‘media meta‐capital’ has played a significant role in her attainment of a unique voice and speaking platform in a postapartheid, public domain in which few white voices, and especially Afrikaner ones, are being heard

Making meaning of citizenship: How ‘born frees’ use media in South Africa's democratic evolution

Abstract By examining young peoples habits of using the media in relation to citizenship, this article responds to calls that the starting point for research into citizenship and democracy should be the perspectives of citizens themselves. Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative research with young South Africans (the ‘born free’ generation), the study sought to gain insight into how young people use media to make sense of notions of citizenship and participatory democracy in ways that are relevant and reliable to their everyday lives. The findings suggest that young South Africans are distrustful of politicians and political institutions. Media consumption was high amongst participants, as well as media trust, but the lack of relevance of media content suggests that those wanting to engage with the youth through the media need to target content through more youth-orientated genres.

Listening to the ‘Born Frees’: Politics and disillusionment in South Africa

ABSTRACT In 2014 South Africa celebrated 20 years of democracy, and for many of the ‘Born Frees’ – those who came of age politically after 1996 – this was their first opportunity to vote in national elections. With democracy came the promise for South Africas marginalised majority of voice and agency, but also the implicit promise that their democratically elected government would listen to them. In addition, the South African media have long championed their role as a voice for the voiceless. This article presents work done with youngsters from South Africas poorest province, the Eastern Cape, in an effort to listen to their experience of politics and to understand their use of the media – especially whether it enables them to speak out and be heard in the public sphere. Our research shows that young people do not feel listened to by either politicians or journalists. Our conversations have revealed a strong sense of disempowerment, disillusionment with and distrust of both politics and the media. This has resulted in strategic and shrewd media consumption, and despite their invidious situation, they are able to articulate a critical appraisal of both politics and the media which is worth listening to.

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 Africas 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.

Listening and the ambiguities of voice in South African journalism

ABSTRACT Political theorists like Bickford (1996) and media theorists like Couldry (2006) have introduced the concept of listening as a complement to long-standing discussions about voice in democracies and in the media which serve the democratic project. This enhanced understanding of voice goes beyond just hearing into giving serious attention to, in particular, marginalised voices. This article reports on an investigation into the ways in which mainstream and community media in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, understand listening as an important part of their role as journalists. Interviews probed the attitudes of journalists and editors towards listening, and also interrogated their own understandings of their role in South Africa, particularly in relation to young people who are finding their political “voice”. The research showed that “listening” as a journalistic practice is seldom understood in anything more than common sense ways and is certainly not an organising principle of reporting and disseminating news. This results in journalism that is events focused, often sensationalist and whose agenda is set powerfully by political actions and actors in the environment. The power of being heard is almost solely in the hands of the journalists, who regard themselves as “the voice of the people”, without actively providing a space for listening to the voices of community members. But, within this generalised environment, there are two very interesting projects in which journalists and editors are actively listening to the issues and stories of citizens and letting them set agendas.

When the Students Are Revolting: The (Im)Possibilities of Listening in Academic Contexts in South Africa

Student activists in South Africa have put the decolonisation of higher education firmly on the agenda, demanding that researchers and teachers pay attention to something in particular that is very hard to hear and very possibly unhearable. These young, black South Africans are the intellectual force upon whom we are depending for the altered future of our country. We cannot change the circumstances which continue to frustrate and anger them without paying particular attention to them. Taking on the knowledge bases and knowledge generation in the Global South, they are demanding that we rethink the logos-based project of universities in South Africa. Their struggle is critically about how knowledge is implicated as a shaping force in lives which are still defined by colonial governmentality.

Capital or critique? When journalism education seeks to influence the field

Abstract Drawing on Bourdieu’s theories of field and capital, we examine the limitations that a journalism school at a prestigious university faces in making a meaningful contribution to the field within a developing country. In the postapartheid South African media landscape, journalism is under pressure both from global forces and a political imperative to address social justice. Given the heterogeneity of the journalistic field and the fact that what counts as capital in it is contested, the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University attempts to redefine the parameters by inculcating a particular approach to and philosophy of journalism practice. While Rhodes wants to educate excellent (professional) journalists, it is guided by an overt political mission to cultivate a journalism that is not necessarily ‘in sync’ with the wider field. Ironically, most undergraduates come from the economic and cultural elite, with specific intentions to accumulate the capital which Rhodes bestows. Students are confronted with their privilege and with alternative ideas about the purpose of journalism, and are asked to make choices and take up positions. We consider whether this critical praxis approach is able to influence the ‘state of play’ – or the distribution of power – within the field.

Interrogating citizen journalism practices: a case study of Rhodes University’s Lindaba Ziyafika Project

ABSTRACT Several scholars have noted that citizen journalism in the West is essentially an online phenomenon, driven by the affordability of Internet technologies. In Africa, projects such as Ushahidi in Kenya have been enabled by platforms such as cell phones and social networks. Voices of Africa, based in southern Africa, publishes on the web only. Publishing on the Internet presumes a citizenry which is relatively well educated; has familiarity with, and access to, new media as a form of social communication; and is confident in their right to participate in newly developed public spheres – particularly those online. In Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, the citizen journalists recruited to work for the Iindaba Ziyafika (‘the news is coming’) project attached to the community newspaper Grocott’s Mail, came from a community in which there is 70 per cent unemployment, poor schooling and a lack of basic facilities such as running water, indoor sanitation and electricity. In the interests of understanding whether citizen journalism could work in such an impoverished context with little access to the Internet, and what form it would take, this project was selected to investigate the working practices of these journalists. This research is useful given that the social situation of Grahamstown might produce a different kind of practice than that exhibited by other citizen journalists in different parts of the world.