Crisis! What Crisis?: The Multiple Dimensions of the Zimbabwean Crisis

This is a multidisciplinary anthology that analyses the Zimbawean crisis and teh coping mechanisms enployed in the the same

“South Africa belongs to all who live in it”: Deconstructing media discourses of migrants during times of xenophobic attacks, from 2008 to 2017

A growing body of literature on media and xenophobia in South Africa has shown that the depictionof immigrants by the mainstream print media is overwhelmingly negative, and this in turn enforcesnegative stereotypes that contribute to further xenophobic attacks. This paper adds a dimensionthat is missing from existing research to focus on media representation of immigrants withinquestions around citizenship and identity.. The arguments driving this paper are inspired by theproclamations in the South African Constitution preamble, which states that “South Africa belongsto all who live in it, united in our diversity”. This paper analyses how selected print media in thecountry construct immigrants in the context of identity and belonging. We start from the premisethat as a social institution, the media play an important role in shaping policies on immigrationthat have a bearing on these matters. Using theories of media and national identity, the paperexamines thematic frames used by the selected newspapers to construct the image of immigrantsduring three periods of xenophobic violence, in 2008, 2015, and 2017. Our main argument isthat while the media have played a significant role in creating awareness about the scourge ofxenophobia, they have, wittingly or unwittingly, used narrative frames that justify the exclusion offoreigners, thereby entrenching a perception of insiders and outsiders, citizens and non-citizens.In the process, they also reinforce fears of a national takeover by the foreign “other”. Thesearguments hold significance in the broader debates about the transformation of the print mediaand its role in the on-going process of nation-building

Big brother is watching : surveillance regulation and its effects on journalistic practices in Zimbabwe

Abstract: In many African countries, including Zimbabwe journalists have been subjected to various policy regulations that have widely been criticised for making the practice of journalism difficult. Part of the reason has been the advent of competitive politics that have left the ruling regimes scrambling to limit freedoms and stop opposition onslaught on their power. One way the Zimbabwean government has limited freedom of expression has been through the introduction of the Interception of Communications Act (ICA), a surveillance regulation law that has had a chilling effect on the practice of journalism. This paper utilises Pierre Bourdieu’s journalistic field as theoretical lenses, focusing on the concepts of journalistic field to explore how journalists have been affected by the threats posed by this surveillance regulation law in their daily newsgathering and production activities. The study is based on qualitative interviews with Zimbabwean journalists and civil society activists with an interest in the media, sampled from the private print media. The article argues that state surveillance has disrupted the journalistic field in the country by damaging the relationship between journalists and their sources, thus compromising one of the basic tenets of journalism. Journalists can no longer follow the widely held newsgathering routines as a result of state surveillance policies. Also, investigative journalism, which was already under pressure from political influence, has been further eroded. We argue that Zimbabwe journalists need to develop reporting practices that expose surveillance and find creative ways to negotiate and resist surveillance

Social justice for the poor : the framing of socioeconomic rights in selected South African newspapers

Apartheid South Africa created a society of deep-seated inequalities divided along race, class, and gender lines. The promotion of socioeconomic rights and redistributive justice is thus an important element in the country’s on-going transformation. This article analyzes the framing of stories on socioeconomic rights by three South African national newspapers. Using a combination of framing analysis and critical political economy insights, we show that although the newspapers foreground the importance of socioeconomic rights and recognize voices of the marginalized, the majority of the stories contain gaps and silences on critical issues concerning the structural causes of inequality and socioeconomic injustices in South Africa. The argument concludes by motivating a rethinking of the country’s normative media frameworks for the development of a journalism practice that would resonate in a country characterized by social polarization and material inequalities.http://journals.sagepub.com/home/jouhj2018Humanities Educatio

Media, race and capital: a decolonial analysis of representation of miners' strikes in South Africa

This article explores media representation of a strike at Lonmin Platinum Mine in Marikana in August 2012, in which the police gunned down 34 miners. Data was collected from randomly selected articles from South African English-language print media. My main argument is that the South African print media provided coverage of the strike that privileged mining interests and generally ignored the concerns and voices of the miners. Using a combination of decolonial and neo-Marxist critical political economy of the media theoretical approaches, I suggest the media in South Africa operates in a global 'colonial matrix of power' that (re)produce dominant discourses and ideologies that favour elite interests. The article concludes with some remarks on the need for media in South Africa to adopt a different ethical and normative framework that gives voice to silenced and marginalised voices.

'The world is our community': rethinking community radio in the digital age

New media technologies - Internet and mobile phones - have transformed the face of radio broadcasting. Research in this area has shown that these technologies are reconfiguring both radio's institutional structures and its practices. Radio, now accessed on multiple digital platforms, is allowing diverse forms of utilization and engagement. In this article, the researcher analyses the changing nature and meaning of 'community' in community radio in the digital age using insights from literature on imagined communities, trans- locality and liminality. The researcher argues that new media technologies are opening up new spaces for community radio that go beyond the geographical and community of interest to embrace trans-local and diasporic communities. There is thus need to interrogate the meaning of community radio in terms of audiences and programming in such new configurations.

Public Broadcasting in Africa Series: Zimbabwe

This report is the result of research that started in 2008 with the aim of collecting, collating and writing up information about regulation, ownership, access, performance as well as prospects for public broadcasting reform in Africa. The Zimbabwe report is part of an 11-country survey of African broadcast media, evaluating compliance with the agreements, conventions, charters and declarations regarding media that have been developed at regional and continental levels in Africa.</jats:p

Knowledge and Ideas in a Context of Power: Rethinking Media Policy and Reform in Southern Africa

The discourse of media reform emerged in southern Africa in the early 1990s on the back of a 'democratisation agenda' supported by policies by Western donors. While much academic attention has been paid to the analysis of media reforms in the region within democratisation and globalisation frameworks, less sustained analysis has been made in examining the role of bilateral and multilateral donors, in conjunction with various Western epistemic communities, in pushing a neo-liberal media reform agenda, which this paper argues is a continuation of the developmental project that started in the 1960s. In addition, discourses framing media reform policies and the manner in which domestic (read southern African) policy elites are incorporated into this neo-liberal transnational project have not been subject to systematic inquiry. This paper will dialogue with two conceptual positions: coloniality theories and postcolonial approaches to argue that the 'media and democracy' agenda, as a modernity project, has been an imposition of ideas and priorities from Western actors to advance certain material interests. In conclusion, this paper provides alternative ways of (re)conceptualising media reform in southern Africa