Political economy of media transformation in South Africa, edited by Anthony Olorunnisola and Keyan G. Tomaselli, New Jersey, Hampton Press, 2011, 314 pp., £27.50, ISBN 9781572739918
The political transformation in South Africa, starting tentatively in the reform era of P.W. Botha in the early 1980s, and ultimately culminating in the first democratic elections in 1994 and a new post-apartheid constitution in 1996, has been covered from many angles. This book takes a novel approach in focusing on the role of the media, both in probing the apartheid structures as they began to crumble and in dealing with a radically different post-apartheid state. The authors explore the processes of media adaptation, strategy and propagation, in terms of advertising, print media and other forms, from the late-apartheid era to the late 2000s. The book seeks to consider the role of media from theoretical and technical viewpoints: which aspects of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the private sphere changed with the onset of democracy in South Africa and what underlying, as well as more overt, changes occurred in the nature of media's role in Africa's most prosperous nation. As the Introduction states, ‘analyses of political economy of media transformations are painfully few and far between’ and this text seeks to ‘chronicle the many dimensions to, and forms of, transformation that visit the process both of … democratic reforms and … institutional (including media) transformations in South Africa’ (pp. 1–2). The book succeeds in chronicling many of these changes, but is somewhat less successful in probing the nature of the changes that have taken place.
The book is organised into 11 chapters. Several of the chapters are written by the same authors. This enables continuity in themes across the chapters, but also prevents wholly new arguments or subjects from emerging. The subject of media transformation inevitably requires examining both technical change and engagement in the late/post-apartheid era as well as more representational changes, a task which brings notable difficulties. A number of the chapters, whilst elucidating important technical and institutional developments that emerged in South Africa and further afield in Africa (for instance in Nigeria and Uganda in Olorunnisola and Lugalambi's chapter ‘A continental perspective on the transformation of South Africa's media and communication policies’), are unfortunately laden with technical jargon. The collection is more successful in the elements of postcolonial critique and theoretical considerations that emerge in a number of chapters: in Alexander Holt's examination of structural reform and advertising (Chapter 4) and Herman Wasserman's exploration of media discourses and former president Thabo Mbeki's comments on identity and the media (Chapter 5). The focus on the African National Congress (ANC) government's policy of black economic empowerment (BEE), in particular in Chapters 8 and 9, is also one of the stronger elements of the collection. What becomes clear is that in spite of the aims and aspirations of BEE, ‘BEE firms [are] still met with stiff resistance from non-empowerment companies’ (Boloka, p. 199) and the media marketplace is difficult and precarious for newly formed BEE companies. Ultimately, Boloka points out, ‘as much as empowerment continues to influence the way the South African media industry operates, it lags behind in terms of achieving the aims that it sets out to accomplish’ (ibid., p. 206). Fundamentally, the extent of allocative, as well as operational, control of South Africa's media in the hands of black South Africans is still too small.
Overall, whilst the book provides some interesting analyses of the media's development since the end of apartheid, the structure of the collection and the chapters themselves seem to undermine the book's central objective. Often important points or discussion items emerge only towards the end of a chapter and certain chapters, notably Herman Wasserman's ‘Identification in transformation’, which seeks to look at the role of the media in the context of the ANCs rhetoric during the presidency of Mbeki, are critically undermined by length. Important and interesting considerations on the role of rhetoric and representation, as well as both the representing of and by the media, are thus cut short. It seems surprising that elements relating to the Transitional Executive Council (TEC) that emerged just before the 1994 elections are not covered in greater detail. Notably, the creation during the transition phase of the Independent Media Commission and enactment of the Independent Broadcasting Act, which set the tentative template for the type of overall (independent) media landscape to come, only receive brief mention in Olorunnisola and Lugalambi's chapter.
This collection identifies some important considerations in looking at the nature of media transformation in South Africa over the past 20 years. Unfortunately the shifts from theoretical to technical and back again ultimately hamper the overall project. The final chapter by editors Olorunnisola and Tomaselli provides a useful summary of the themes and issues considered in the collection and prospects for further inquiry in the future. They end by noting the potentially precarious nature of the media in the face of ANC/government pressure, something especially relevant given recent debates on the proposed Protection of State Information Bill in the South African Parliament. As the editors state, ‘the future of the media in South Africa may ultimately … depend on the courage of the corporate media that … largely became Black-owned enterprises as a direct result of the empowerment policies of the post-Apartheid government’ (p. 280). Perhaps a singular focus on BEE and its success and failures may be the next port of call for the editors as this is where the book's greatest strength lies.