800 words essay

Journal of African Media Studies Volume 1 Number 2 © 2009 Intellect Ltd

Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/jams.1.2.195/1

South African media in transition Colin Sparks University of Westminster

Abstract The development of the South African media since 1990 is one instance of a more general process of democratization observable in many parts of the world during the same period. The theory of elite continuity in such political changes is presented and tested against the evidence. While the mass movement in the final years of the Apartheid regime influenced early debates about broadcasting, subsequent develop- ments have made SABC more and more a prisoner of the economic realities of the new South Africa, where white economic power remains largely intact. In the press, ownership has mostly been transferred to Black Economic Empowerment enterprises, who have also gained from new commercial broadcasting licences. As divisions have opened in the ANC, so there have been increasing signs of the politi- cization of SABC. The evidence fits the theory of elite continuity, but the South African situation necessitates modification to fit this reality better. The importance of elite renewal is very clear in this case: political power has shifted completely to a new governing elite. Secondly, the fact that the apartheid regimes faced protracted mass opposition means that there are still traces of potentially radical changes to the media, for example in community media.

Introduction This paper examines the changes to the South African media over the last two decades from a comparative perspective. The transition to democracy in South Africa had unique features, but it is worthwhile examining the simi- larities it displays with other regimes in Eastern Europe and Asia, which also changed rapidly at more or less the same time (Huntington 1991).

The dominant current of thinking about these changes has been labelled, appropriately enough, ‘transitology’ (Schmitter and Karl 1994). This sees twin processes of democratization and marketization as the fun- damental axes along which change has been taking place, particularly in the former USSR and Eastern Europe (Lee 1994; Mickiewicz 1999; Gross 2002; Jakubowicz 2003a). The problem is that the development of these countries has been very far from uniform. Some countries, including South Africa, are both market economies and democracies, but others are more complicated. China demonstrates that there can be marketization without corresponding democratization. Russia demonstrates that while it is possi- ble to move towards democracy, it is also possible to move away from it. The upshot is that transitology is today in an intellectual crisis. As Carothers put it, any adequate theory needs to: ‘start by assuming that what is often thought of as an uneasy, precarious, middle ground between full-fledged democracy and outright dictatorship is actually the most common political

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Keywords South Africa media democratization Black Economic

Empowerment (BEE) African National

Congress (ANC) South African

Broadcasting Corporation (SABC)

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condition today of countries in the developing world and the post-communist world’ (Carothers 2002: 17–18).

An alternative view, preferred by the current author, is that of ‘elite continuity.’ This identifies the central feature of the post-communist tran- sitions as the old nomenklatura reshaping itself into a private capitalist class. This may involve democratization, as in those formerly Communist countries that have joined the EU, or it may involve the continuation of one-party dictatorship, as in China. In terms of the mass media, this has meant a high degree of continuity in structures and personnel, highly politicized interventions into broadcasting and a highly partisan press. The details vary considerably from place to place, but there are distinct commonalities (Sparks 2008). This paper begins with a brief exposition of elite continuity theory before going on to consider the recent history of the South African media in order to test whether this theory, developed for post-communist societies, has any explanatory power there.

Elite continuity In summary, elite continuity theory displays the following seven components:

1. The transition from dictatorship to democracy can take a number of forms. The events in central and eastern Europe were genuine revolutions. In most cases these revolutions were negotiated between a section of the dissident opposition and the reform wing of the Communist Party, but even in those cases they represented a clean break in the organisation of political life. The monopoly of political power held by the Communist Party was broken, both formally and substantially, and new political par- ties were formed and contested for power. As the case of China demon- strates, however, such a political transformation is not essential to the marketization of society.

2. There is considerable continuity in both institutions and personnel between the old regime and the new. Institutions like the civil service, the army and the broadcasters remained substantially intact, both in their social position and in terms of their internal structure. In broad- casting, for example, the old state broadcasters were nowhere broken up or privatised. They remained central to the media systems, and they retained a very high proportion of their existing personnel. Although the press shifted towards an advertising driven model, and while new titles have entered the market, particularly at the popular end, the old titles often retain a strong position.

3. The shift towards a market economy is a political process, with the award of favourable opportunities being closely connected to political power. The licensing of the new commercial broadcasters is a case in point, where political connections were essential to the winning of franchises. China demonstrates this clearly: many of the new ‘entrepre- neurs’ are either party members, relatives of party members, or associ- ated with party members.

4. The media institutions that emerged from the transition are every- where strongly influenced by the political elite. This is particularly obvious in the case of the broadcasters, where regulatory and governing bodies are regularly recomposed to follow the shifting results of elections.

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The media changed from being one locus of power to one of the stakes of power. In China, although the party retains sole control over the media, it is significantly divided along geographical lines, and disputes between different sections of the party often explain particular kinds of media coverage.

5. The revolutions in Eastern Europe and Russia were, following this logic, certainly political revolutions: they transformed the ways in which these countries were governed. They were not social revolu- tions: they did not pose any fundamental challenge to the social order in industry or the state machine. In China, there has been no political revolution, and the social order in industry and the state machine remains more or less intact. Everywhere, a surprising percentage of the new entrepreneurs are simply old bureaucrats in smart new Italian suits. The people working for these entrepreneurs, or not work- ing for anyone at all, are the same people who worked for the old bureaucrats.

6. The main dynamic of the revolutions was that the old elite (roughly, the nomenklatura) transformed itself from one that rested upon the collective ownership of state property, which it guaranteed through its political monopoly, to one that rests on private property, acquired formally or informally through the exercise of political power, but sustained economically in the manner familiar from western capitalist societies. In China, the new entrepreneurial class is closely fused with the bureaucratic Communist elite and the interplay of economic and political influence is central to the functioning of the system.

7. The degree of democratization, if any, is secondary in this model. While the shift to individualized private capital implies a pluralisation of power in the society, it does not automatically follow that this will be articulated through a democratic framework. In the cases studied during the 1990s, there is a considerable degree of democratization, but theoretically this remained a contingent feature of the new order, not its essence. In Russia, ‘democratic’ is problematic at any time, and the evidence points strongly towards a reversal, even of those democ- ratic elements that were visible in the immediate post-1991 period. China, of course, retains most of the features of the classical model of a Communist dictatorship.

The last days of the apartheid state The apartheid state was clearly a capitalist state, but it was a distinctive kind of capitalist state. It was ‘racial capitalism.’ Race and class were tightly linked together, with the dominant economic and political groups being more or less exclusively white (Louw 2004). This racialisation was particularly marked in the public sector, where before 1992: ‘white people occupied 98 per cent of the top four income categories within the public service, and 81 per cent of the top eight’ (Southall 2007: 6). Secondly, despite its anti-communism, the South African economy had a strong state sector. This was partly the result of the use of political power by the Afrikaner population to create an industrial capitalist sector owned by members of their own community (Southall 2007b: 201–06). The second reason was that as South Africa became more isolated, it became essential

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to construct national industries that could sustain the overall economy (e.g. oil, armaments) and the state played a leading role in these develop- ments (Horwitz 2001: 324).

It also shared with the Communist states the unremitting hostility of the majority of the population. Popular resistance in South Africa was at least as extensive as in any of the Communist countries and repression was as bloody as anything they had suffered since the Stalin purges. In the 1980s: ‘…according to government figures, 5,000 people had died in the wake of political struggle. Only two of these were white, more than 30,000 people had been jailed without charge …’ (McKenzie and Sperling 1990: 1). From the 1970s onwards the opposition was increas- ingly dominated by the industrial working class, who created in the Confederation of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), an organisa- tion marked by the same sort of courage and militancy as Solidarnosc showed in Poland (Baskin 1991). The best-known political forces in the opposition were the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP), which had had an ‘incredibly close relationship’ since the SACP was banned in 1950 (McKinley 1997: x). In fact, however ‘the ANC played a marginal role in the decisive labour movement and popular domestic struggles of the 1980s’ (Butler 2007: 35). This was because the ANC and the SACP were both wedded to rural guerrilla warfare and were relatively isolated from this largely urban struggle (Legassick 2002).

These social relations generated media institutions designed to repro- duce their essential features, along with persecuted radical alternatives that sought apartheid’s overthrow (Phelan 1987: 17). Even in apparently ‘apolitical’ content, the prevailing social and racial relations were discern- able (Tomaselli and Tomaselli 1985). Dissenters faced repressive legislation that made critical reporting a hazardous business (McKenzie and Sperling 1990). In practice, legal restraints were often superfluous since ownership and market structure rendered the mainstream media supportive of the regime or, at best, only mildly critical (Tomaselli, Tomaselli and Muller 1989: 33).

The main broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), was: ‘originally conceived along racial divides according to the logic of apartheid’ (Baker 1996: 219). It was a ‘state’ rather than a ‘public’ broadcaster and was widely perceived as an extension of the National Party (NP) government. News programmes embodied the viewpoints of the government. Policy privileged white audiences, for whom there was a much richer supply of material than for speakers of African languages (Baker 1996: 213 and 219). Staff composition embodied apartheid principles: in 1994, 52 out of 53 senior managers (98 per cent) were white (the other one was black) and only one was female (Mpofu 1996: 44–4). SABC received around 29 per cent of its income from licence fees, with the remainder coming from advertising. In the context of apartheid, that meant advertisers wanted white audi- ences (Duncan 2001: 114). The only commercial broadcaster, M-Net, was owned by the white-controlled press groups and, as a subscription service, was only available to a wealthy (again overwhelmingly white) audience (Tomaselli 2002: 137).

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The press was dominated by white-owned groups, split between Afrikaans titles and English titles. The former were closely aligned with the National Party and pursued the policies of different factions within it (Muller 1989). The English titles were owned by mining corporations who benefitted from the labour policies of the state. They were at best moderate critics of apartheid:

this opposition to apartheid is structurally limited, since the English press is owned by white capital and therefore has a vested interest in maintaining the conditions conducive to the continued accumulation of capital, based on an exploitative division of labour.

(Tomaselli, Tomaselli and Muller 1989: 61)

Newspaper readers were mostly white, but there were publications with a black audience, like the Sowetan. This popular paper had a black editorial staff but was owned by a white company. It and a few other titles were ‘vir- ulently anti-apartheid, but not necessarily anti-capitalist’ (Tomaselli and Tomaselli 1989: 52). Journalists and editors who went too far in their critiques ran the risks of being jailed or sacked. They tended to be more moderate in their stance than the alternative black press that emerged from the mid-1980s (Tomaselli 2000b).

The wave of mass struggles generated an upsurge in alternative media addressing many of the linguistic and cultural groupings in the country. The majority were radical and leftist in their orientation (Adhikri 2000; Claassen 2000; Krüger 2000; Merrett and Saunders 2000; Seekings 2000; van Kessell 2000). In at least some of the universities, serious efforts were made to train young people entering journalism in critical and indepen- dent thinking (Steenveld 2006: 278–83). Partly as a result of popular resistance, and partly in response to their realization that there was little future for a South Africa wedded to autarchic national development, there emerged a wing of the governing elite that sought a path to ending at least the most dysfunctional features of the apartheid system (Gelb 2005: 369). The solution was negotiation between the NP and the more moderate wing of the ANC (Duncan 2001: 79; Louw 2004: 161).

The transition The transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa had two char- acteristics that are central to our concerns: it was a negotiated process between the white elite and the leadership of the ANC, and at the same time there was a popular movement with radical concerns. Many of the distinctive features of the developing situation in South Africa can be traced to that contradiction.

The negotiated end to the regime took several years. It not only required that a section of the Afrikaner political elite compromised with a section of the ANC elite, but that both sides could ensure acceptance of any deal by their social bases (Louw 2004: 175). For the NP, the obvious concession was ending the white monopoly of political power, allowing the ANC to participate in free elections. For the ANC leadership, concessions involved moving away from radical aims towards policies that respected the needs of business (Gelb 2005: 369).

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These compromises produced advantages for some and disadvantages for others. As Louw put it: ‘… the settlement’s winners were South Africa’s black middle class and (Anglo) big business, while the losers have been South Africa’s black underclass, now (perhaps permanently) trapped in poverty, plus Afrikaners who face growing political and socio-economic marginalization’ (Louw 2004: 174).

One of the strongest negotiating cards that the ANC leadership held was that they were the only political force that could control the near- insurrectionary moods amongst the black population. From the mid-1980s, trade unions, political organisations and ‘civil society’ organisations had developed strong traditions of mass action. These often led to violent and bloody confrontations. The tragic events ensuing from what was con- sciously termed the ‘Leipzig option’ of mass confrontation underlined the necessity of compromise, both to the NP government and to the more moderate sections of the ANC (Louw 2004: 167).

The combination of state repression and the political initiatives of the ANC were enough to calm the situation, demobilize ‘civil society’, and smooth the way for a negotiated transfer of power (Saul 1997a). The organisations that had inspired the movement did not, however, vanish overnight. The high level of popular mobilization and political awareness that marked the struggle in South Africa left important marks on the emerging democratic order.

Both of these tendencies were clearly marked in the course of debate about the mass media. SABC was the object of intense negotiation. The NP plan to set up a ‘Task Group,’ which ‘consisted almost entirely of white Afrikaans men’ under the SABC Chairman Christo Viljoen was viewed with suspicion both by the ANC and civil society movements (Currie and Markowitz 1993: 96–97). So strong was popular feeling that reforming SABC was vital to the transition that there was a mass demonstration demanding that ‘The People Shall Broadcast’ (Currie and Markowitz 1993: 98).

In these debates, a wide spectrum of views were articulated, from those who wanted a state controlled system, via those who wanted to make it more responsive to communities, through to those wanting a commercial system (Barnett 1998b: 554). Both the main groups in the negotiations agreed that it was necessary to re-establish SABC as an independent ‘public service’ broadcaster (Teer-Tomaselli 2004: 30; Barnett 1998b: 554). The independence of the SABC was, however, limited through the elimina- tion of proposals for some Board members to be elected by the staff, and for mechanisms for public access to the Board (Duncan 2006: 68–69).

Broadcasting was entrusted to an Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), which began work in March 1994. The IBA was designed as a buffer between the government and broadcasting, ensuring that no one party could capture it in the way that the National Party had in the past (Horwitz 2001: 141–45). The remit of the IBA was ‘to ensure that broad- casting in South Africa serves the public in such a way that the ideals of a democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous society are pursued and advanced’ (quoted in Currie and Markowitz 1993: 97).

A new SABC Board was established in 1993 (Maingard 1997: 262). The first Chair was an independent anti-apartheid activist, but he was

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edged out in favour of ANC veteran Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri (Van Zyl Slabbert 2006: 93–96). This Board was charged with organizing the broadcasting of the first democratic election in South Africa. SABC did this in a manner that led one member of the Board to claim the election was a high point in balanced, professional broadcasting (Teer-Tomaselli 1995: 598). This positive view of SABC coverage is one that later commentators have endorsed, contrasting it with both earlier and later performances (Davis 2005: 233–34).

In this, the influence of a widespread democratic popular conscious- ness was influential. The Board wished to retain control over editorial decisions, but were opposed by the journalists, who argued successfully for a large measure of editorial independence (Teer-Tomaselli 1995: 581). The urge to democratize corporate structures from below was widespread in the news organisation of SABC, and its proponents managed to achieve a degree of success that was to last for several years (Baker 1996: 213; Duncan 2001: 153–60).

The privately-owned mainstream press lay beyond the scope of pub- lic intervention and was subject to less radical change. The Argus Group, owned by Anglo-American, began to restructure in 1993 and sold the Sowetan to black-owned Corporate Africa (better known under its later name of New Africa Investments Limited or Nail), headed by the late Ntatho Motlana, a long-standing ANC supporter. The other trend they pioneered was the reintegration of South African capital into the global market, opening negotiations about, and ultimately selling Argus to, the Irish-based Independent Newspapers (Tomaselli 2000: 284–85).

The main change during this period, however, was the decline in the independent oppositional press. This had always depended very heavily on subsidy from international supporters (Louw and Tomaselli 1991: 224–26). After it became clear that the old regime was passing, donors switched their support to other priorities like education (Van Zyl Slabbert 2000: 163–64). Those that survived reflected the racialised structure of society (Froneman and Pretorius 2000: 62).

The immediate aftermath The ANC government that came to power in 1994 enjoyed an overwhelm- ing popular mandate and the support of two of the major forces that brought an end to apartheid. The ‘triple alliance’ of the ANC, the SACP and COSATU sought not only a democratic political order but progress towards ending historic injustices. To a much greater extent than any- where in the post-communist world, the new leaders of South Africa were committed to a ‘progressive’ social agenda. For example, issues of gender equality in the media were seldom raised in Eastern Europe (Reading 1995). In the new South Africa, addressing gender inequalities was as pressing a task as altering the ethnic composition of the workforce (Manhando 1996). The new SABC Board was chaired by a woman and at the time of writing the (highly contentious) Board has a majority of women members. Such policies were essential to help retain the loyalty of the highly politicized mass organisations that had brought the govern- ment to power.

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This commitment to improving the conditions of the majority was embodied in the wider programmes of the new government, particularly in the ‘Reconstruction and Development Programme’ (RDP) which aimed to provide basic homes, water, electricity and other amenities to South Africa’s poor. At the same time, there was a commitment to changing the balance of economic power, creating a ‘patriotic black bourgeoisie’ through Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) (Marais 2002: 97).

The first of these two objectives soon ran into difficulties as a result of the macro-economic situation, and was replaced in 1996 by a more orthodox, free-market successor strategy for ‘Growth, Employment and Redistribution’ (GEAR). The aim of this policy was to integrate the econ- omy closer into the global market and develop export-oriented industries capable of producing the employment growth that was seen as essential to improving the conditions of the black population (Gelb 2005: 385–86).

Black Economic Empowerment, however, has a more successful history. A generation of black businessmen has emerged, usually closely aligned with the ANC, who have gained control of previously white-owned busi- nesses (Louw 2004: 179). The state attempts to broaden black share own- ership through privatisation of telecommunications, was unsuccessful: the scheme encouraging wider participation resulted in only 1 per cent of the shares being held by blacks (Rumney 2005: 407).

The media provide examples of some of the major issues that domi- nated this period. The media was much freer than it had been (Article 19 1996: 8–9). The processes of change were accompanied by open debates and inclusive consultation. There remained, however, conflicting interests and scarce resources, as the reform of the SABC illustrated; this was dis- cussed by a ‘Triple Enquiry’ Process, launched by the IBA in April 1994. The enquiry looked at financing, cross ownership and local content. Conflicting opinions were presented from the SABC, civil society organisations and trade unions, commercial operations and cultural associations, but partic- ipation was lower than before (Barnett 1998b: 555). Contributions from civil society organisations and commercial broadcasters argued that SABC was too large and too centralized. In order to facilitate a plural broadcast- ing environment, it should lose some of its channels. SABC argued to retain all its current channels (Barnett 1999a: 283–85). One problem was to find ways in which broadcasting could better reflect the enormous cul- tural diversity of the country (Barnett 1998a: 19). Although English is de facto the language of political and economic power, it is the home lan- guage of less than 10 per cent of the population, and only about 25 per cent of the black population are comfortable in it (Barnett 2000: 66–67). There are eleven official languages, some spoken by relatively small minority groups.

The compromise agreed by Parliament saw the SABC retain its three television channels and six radio channels (Barnett 1999a: 283–85). Radio was identified as the most important medium for the majority of the population and the effort to alter the pattern of apartheid broadcasting was most influential here. Six SABC radio channels, and seven new sta- tions in Cape Town and Johannesburg, were privatised into the hands of consortia embodying ethnic diversity (Barnett 1999b: 657–59). Many of the licensees had close relations with the ANC (Horwitz 2001: 173–74).

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The SABC tried to revamp its output to make it more representative, attempting to produce a wider range of programming in African languages.

The other major IBA initiative was launching community radio sta- tions. Designed to reflect the diversity of languages and cultures that made up the ‘rainbow nation,’ these were clearly a direct inheritor of the tradition of popular mobilisation that characterized the struggle against apartheid (Emdon 1998: 147–49). By 1997, more than 100 had been licensed and at least 70 were reported to be on air (Barnett 1998b: 560).

In the press, there was less effort to develop a media structure better reflecting the social geography of the country. The oppositional press of the late 1980s collapsed after 1994, unable to sustain itself without subsi- dies. The more radical voices were absorbed into the commercially suc- cessful and moderate mainstream (Tomaselli 2000b). The major shifts were in ownership of titles that continued to have a predominantly white readership. The process of ‘unbundling’, which had begun during the transition, continued with both English-language and Afrikaans titles changing hands. The main beneficiaries of these transfers were the new BEE consortia who reached amicable agreements with the white owners. There was often clear evidence of the close relationship between political power and the process of economic change (Barnett 1999b: 654). The new ownership arrangements were agreed voluntarily by both the English language and Afrikaans press owners who, it is argued, surrendered their control over inessential elements of their businesses in order to retain their core assets (Tomaselli 2000a: 283–88; Rumney 2005: 405).

The longer haul The apartheid system was one of grotesque inequality between rich whites and poor blacks. The new government set out to alter that. They were able to take pride in the fact that between 1994 and 1999: safe water supply availability rose from 70 to 80 per cent of the population; electricity supply rose from 40 to 63 per cent of the population; telephone connections rose from 25 to 35 per cent; and 630,000 houses had been built (Marais 2001: 189). According to the same writer, however, 75 per cent of new telephone connections were cut off each month, water and electricity connections are frequently cut off for non-payment, and the number of ‘houses’ includes both houses actually built and plots of land reserved for the building of as yet unrealised housing (Marais 2001: 190). In terms of overall government spending, there was a degree of ‘turning swords into ploughshares’: between 1990/91 and 2004/05, the proportion of the budget going to ‘protection service’ fell from 20 to 16 per cent, while the proportion spent on welfare rose from 46 to 51 per cent (Gelb 2005: 371).

These projects have failed to have a major impact on inequality (Bond 2004: 8). White incomes remain on average 7.7 times greater than black incomes. While some Africans have seen substantial rises in their income, the outcome for the mass of the black working class has been much less favourable: some 10 per cent of African households saw their income rise by 20 per cent, but the poorest 40 per cent experienced an identical drop (Roberts 2005: 494).

One reason for the persistence of such inequalities, and the major reason why it is rising within the African group, is the impact of unemployment,

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which on a strict definition rose from 20 per cent in 1994 to 30.5 per cent in 2002. On a broader definition, it rose from 28.6 per cent to 48.1 per cent. This increase has been disproportionately amongst Africans (Altman 2005: 425–26). The ‘informal sector’ into which these former workers have been driven is 86 per cent African and 7 per cent Indian: it is esti- mated that 80 per cent are engaged in ‘survivalist’ activities which barely keep them alive (Marais 2001: 178).

While whites have retained many of their economic privileges through surrendering their monopoly of political power, two groups of Africans have benefited from the new order: the middle class and businessmen. The former have been actively promoted in both the civil service and the paras- tatals (state owned companies). In the civil service, the percentage of Africans employed rose from 41.3 per cent in 1993 to 61.8 per cent in 2003, with Africans accounting for 60 per cent of senior managers and similar portfolios (Southall 2007a: 7). One reason for halting the sell-off of the parastatals was that retail share offers did not encourage Africans to invest. If they remained in state hands, it was possible to practice positive discrimination (Southall 2007b: 222). The new African business class similarly owes a great deal to government policies and close connections with the ANC (Southall 2005: 472). In this use of the state to promote positive discrimination for a particular ethnic group, commentators have noted the irony that the ANC is following closely the strategy the National Party used to promote the Afrikaners (Southall 2007b: 2003–06).

This policy has been quite successful in changing the ethnic composi- tion of the business class (Tomaselli 2002: 143). By September 2002, between 12 and 15 per cent of the shares on the Johannesburg stock exchange were owned by Africans (Rumney 2005: 415). On the other hand, it does not mean that there has been a change in the business behaviour of BEE-run companies. For one thing, the funds to purchase the shares came from white-controlled merchant banks which demand a return on their investment (Bond 2000: 42–47). The people running busi- nesses in South Africa are under the same economic pressures whatever their ethnicity.

The result of the elevation of a narrow layer of Africans to considerable wealth and power, while the living standards of the majority have at best stagnated, is that ANC membership, and even more ANC leadership, is now a mechanism to self-advancement. Former leftists find themselves enthusiastic capitalists (Adam et al., 1997: 173). So serious is the problem of ‘moral decay’ that in 2005 ANC Secretary-General Kgalema Motlanthe told the National Council that this ‘cancer’ was the ‘central problem’ fac- ing the party (quoted in Butler 2007: 41).

These features of the new South Africa are reflected in the mass media. The regulatory framework for broadcasting was a direct product of the popular mobilizations and pressures of the transition period. The IBA was the result of popular pressure and many of its policies were designed to generate: ‘procedures for accountability, transparency and public par- ticipation in communications policy’ (Barnett 2003: 175). Echoes of the popular movement could be detected in the development of the Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA), established in 2002 with a specific mission to ‘encourage ownership and control of, and access to,

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media by historically disadvantaged communities as well as by historically diminished indigenous language and cultural groups’ (MDDA Act 2002, Section 3 (b) (i)). To that end, it identified community media as an impor- tant area for investment and assistance, although existing community media protested against the establishment of the Agency on the grounds that it threatened to remove the funding they had already obtained (Jaffer 2002: 99).

The MDDA, however, has been constrained by lack of funding. According to the government’s estimates, adequate funding to allow the MDDA to carry out its mission would be about R100m per year over the first five years (Duncan 2006: 108–109). In the event, the MDDA has an income of about 20 per cent of that estimate. In the Annual Report for the financial year to 31 March 2006, its total income is given as R18.942m (MDDA 2006: 17). In the most recent Annual Report, for the financial year to 31 March 2007, the total income was R22.47, of which R9.6m came as a direct government grant (MDDA 2007: 74). Of this income, just over 75 per cent was spent on project costs. As a result, in 2006–2007 the MDDA was supporting a total of 44 different projects, fourteen of them in community radio, eight in community print, and eighteen in small com- mercial print (MDDA 2007: 37). This is a very creditable achievement for an organisation with a total of thirteen staff, but it is clearly on a small scale compared with the resources devoted to large scale media; the SABC income during the financial year 2006–2007 was R4268.313m, roughly 190 times greater than that of the MDDA (SABC 2007: 8).

The IBA itself had a less positive trajectory. After a series of financial scandals, its budget was cut and its freedom of manoeuvre restricted, with ‘the net effect of this development is that the IBA is increasingly unable to fulfill even the core functions of its mandate’ (Duncan 2000: 54). Eventually, in 2002, it was absorbed into a new ‘FCC style’ regulator, the Independent Communication Authority of South Africa (ICASA) which was designed to cope with the range of problems arising from the techni- cal effects of convergence rather than the essentially political issues of transition. Although ICASA does have a mandate to ‘promote and encour- age the ownership and control of telecommunication and broadcasting services by people from historically disadvantaged groups’, it currently appears to have produced no discussion or policy documents intended to realise that objective in broadcasting (ICASA 2008). There has been a shift from an initial regulatory framework designed to transform the South African communication system, towards one in which the central task is sustaining an existing system. The tasks of empowerment are relegated to a small specialised unit while the mainstream of the system is irrevocably tied to power and money.

The transition phase certainly produced considerable changes in the media. The small number of white-owned companies which controlled the press, and what there was of private television, voluntarily relinquished their holdings to BEE consortia. Similarly, government policy ensured that black controlled companies gained the franchises for new radio stations. At the same time, SABC demonstrated a new commitment to public service ideals, both in its news policy and in the service it provided to its audience. The audience for the African language services increased sharply

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(Duncan 2001: 153–54). There was also, starting in 1994, a serious com- mitment to developing community broadcasting throughout the country, although in practice the first round of stations reflected continued white dominance: ‘By 1995, there were 37 stations on air owned and controlled by whites, as opposed to 23 owned and controlled by black people’ (Duncan, 2001: 166).

This relatively favourable situation did not last. Teer-Tomaselli describes the period 1994–1996 as ‘the golden season of public broadcasting’ (Teer- Tomaselli 2004: 33). It came to an end directly as the result of a financial crisis that engulfed the SABC in 1996. The organisation was not permitted to keep the proceeds of the sale of its six radio stations and it also lost the revenue from their advertising. Overall advertising expenditure was only growing slowly, partly as a result of increasing unemployment, notably amongst women (Duncan 2000: 52–53). The SABC was attracting a decreasing share of this revenue, since its new African-language orientation meant that although its audience remained more or less the same size over- all, it increased its audience amongst the poorer sections of the community, but it lost the richer ones, labelled by the industry CIW (Coloured, Indian and White), and thus attracted less advertising (Duncan 2001: 126).

These revenue problems, combined with the fact that the sheer variety of the new programming meant it was more costly than before, provoked a situation in which the SABC called in the consultant McKinsey to advise on a new structure. They reported in October 2006 and proposed dra- matic shifts in priorities. Among the proposals adopted by the SABC Board were large-scale redundancies (around 30 per cent of the total staff), the outsourcing of many programmes, and stronger central control over edito- rial decisions in the news area, reversing the democratic gains of the tran- sition period (Duncan 2001: 130–38).

These measures proved insufficient to stabilise SABC, and by 1999 there was another financial crisis. This led the organisation to require all its units operate on a self-financing basis. The SABC is even more heavily dependent upon advertising revenue today than it was in the past. In 2000, this accounted for around 80 per cent of total revenues (up from 68.3 per cent in 1990) against only 13 per cent for the licence fee (down from 28.8 per cent) (Duncan 2001: 114). Making each of the units, and notably the radio stations broadcasting in African languages, operate on a self-financing basis meant that the size of their budgets, and therefore their ability to provide a rich mix of programming, depends upon the amount of advertising revenue they can each raise. However, the potential revenues are dependent upon the wealth of the audience, and that varies dramatically from station to station: each of the largely white listeners to Radio Highveld is worth more than ten times as much in advertising revenue as the Zulu speaking listeners of Ukhozi (Duncan 2001: 114–15).

In 1999, a new Broadcasting Act (the fourth) institutionalised this dis- tinction, dividing SABC services in ‘public broadcasting services’ intended to pursue socially-desirable goals and ‘public commercial broadcasting ser- vices’ intended to pursue business goals. The commercial stations are, in theory, supposed to generate a surplus to subsidise the public broadcasting services, but in practice the latter are forced to meet commercial targets and have adapted their services accordingly (Tleane and Duncan 2003: 98).

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The ‘public commercial’ stations themselves, broadcasting into the richer markers, face increasing competition for advertising revenue, as did television following the licensing of the first commercial free-to-air channel, ‘etv’, in 1998, which soon attracted a large and disproportionately upmarket audience. These changes have oriented all broadcasting (SABC public broadcasting as much as commercial broadcasting) on the needs and tastes of the wealthier sections of the audience, who are overwhelm- ingly white. Using the South African standard advertising industry instru- ment, the Living Standards Measure (LSM), more than 70 per cent of the highest groups, LSM 9 and 10, are white, compared with more than 90 per cent of the lowest groups, 1 to 5, who are black (Eighty20, 2005). Programming which depends upon advertising for its finances must, of necessity, be directed disproportionately at the higher income groups, undoing much of the effort at inclusivity that had inspired broadcasting in the immediate post-transition phase.

Economic problems have had an effect in the community sector, although here the general decline in social activism has also played a role. There remains a substantial community sector: an authoritative study published in 2004 found 246 ‘small media organisations’, of which 81 were radio stations, the majority of which were community stations oper- ated by historically disadvantaged communities (Hadland and Thorne 2004: 53–55). There is some debate over whether these stations really are community radio, with some authors reporting great success and enthusi- asm on the part of staff and communities alike (Megwa 2006: 164–65). Others have taken a more critical view. The then-chair of the MDDA defined the participation of the community as the key to the special status of this kind of media, but found that in practice most media modelled themselves on commercial enterprises and neither they nor the commu- nity had any serious links in terms of participation in governance, a view which is shared by other observers (Mkonza 2004: 115–17; Davidson 2004: 44; Duncan 2006: 105–07).

Irrespective of their exact status, most of these stations face economic problems. Hadland and Thorne conducted 25 detailed case studies of ‘small media organisations’, including some community radio stations. They report that: ‘…almost all of our 25 case studies reported they were either struggling to survive or were barely covering costs’ (Hadland and Thorne 2004: 68). Financial difficulties were present even though the small media tend to be concentrated in the richer and more developed provinces and in urban areas (Hadland and Thorne 2004: 65). Thus, very far from providing an alternative to the mainstream media, the small media are tending to reproduce the same geographical distribution as their larger cousins, and engaging in an unequal struggle with them for some of the same advertising revenue: ‘a similar process of commercializa- tion and corporatization has also become evident in the community radio sector as well, as stations have engaged in an increasingly fierce competi- tion for adspend’ (Duncan 2006: 105).

The printed press, as we have seen, began the post-apartheid period with a predominantly white readership. While unbundling and the BEE initiative rapidly changed the ownership structure of the main press groups, it did nothing to reduce concentration. Of the alternative papers

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spawned by the anti-apartheid struggle, only the (now) Mail and Guardian survived after 2002, under the control of Trevor Ncube, a Zimbabwean businessman. There were, however, other new entrants who changed the profile of the South African newspaper reader. In 2001 the first tabloid, the Sunday Sun was launched by Naspers (Wasserman and du Bois 2006). It was quickly joined by other titles that attracted a new, black, working class readership (Strelitz and Steenveld 2005).

Changes to the editorial staff of newspapers were slower than changes to ownership. There were frequent charges that while legal ownership was transferred to Africans, effective operational control remained with the white staff. The majority of journalists were white at the handover, and to remedy this, a big programme of training for Africans was initiated (Steenveld 2006: 291–92). By 2002, this was beginning to show results. The number and proportion of African journalists was rising, although hardly anywhere were they close to the demographics of the country (De Beer and Steyn 2002: 21, footnotes 5 & 6). At the same time, however, Africans were coming to edit a number of the major, historically white, newspapers: ‘By June 2000, twelve out of thirty editors of the country’s main daily and weekly newspapers were black’ (Davis 2005: 238–39).

Neither changes in ownership nor an altered ethnic mix in the news- room necessarily changed the behaviour of the press. Just as with advertising- driven broadcasting, so the press needs to consider its target audience. For the new tabloids, it is primarily the African lower middle class and some segments of the working class, but the other newspapers are aimed at predominantly richer, and therefore predominantly white, audiences. They pursue editorial policies which are attractive to such audiences (Wasserman and de Beer 2005: 39 – 40). With the exception of the new black-oriented tabloids, the press, every bit as much as the broadcasters, is still trapped by the unequal social consequences of the apartheid era.

Political issues Relations between politics and the media in South Africa are determined by the dominance of the ANC at all levels of government. It has won a large majority of the votes in every election since 1994 and until extremely recently there was no sign of a credible opposition developing outside its ranks. This electoral dominance has been achieved by means which not even its worst critics would say are anything other than democratic (Johnston 2005: 28–29). This country has not experienced the shifts in political power that are routine in the majority of democracies and which have been particularly extreme in many post-communist countries. There has been no evidence of the kinds of interventions in the personnel and policies of the media that have marked changes of government in many of the other societies that achieved a democratic order in the late 1980s.

As we saw, the 1994 election was, by most accounts, a triumph of ‘bal- anced’ reporting. All sides in the election were allowed opportunities to present their cases and the formal debates between the ANC and the NP were organised with scrupulous attention to detail (Teer-Tomaselli 1995: 595). Certainly, from the beginning, appointments both to the Board and at a senior staff level reflected the strength of the ANC: the first Chief Executive, Zwelakhe Sisulu, is himself a prominent ANC member and the

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son of Walter and Albertina Sisulu. It seems, however, that the democratic structures which evolved in the transition period were sufficiently strong to prevent too overt interventions into SABC in the interests of any partic- ular party.

Over time the erosion of those structures by successive internal reor- ganisations concentrated power in the hands of managers, whose numbers increased dramatically and who formed around 30 per cent of total employees by the end of the decade (Duncan 2001: 151–52). In 2002, the government attempted to make SABC responsible directly to the Minister of Communications through a Broadcasting Amendment Bill, but were defeated by the public outcry (Tleane and Duncan 2003: 170–75). There was an increasing effort to exercise greater political influence over the nature of broadcasting when mechanisms designed to strengthen senior editorial control were put in place in 2003 (Berger 2004: 73).

The ANC continued to dominate the SABC Board and senior manage- ment. To some extent at least this has resulted in media coverage that privileges the ANC. In electoral terms, the evidence of one study suggests that the ANC enjoyed the largest proportion of coverage in SABC news bulletins, as well as in the commercial etv bulletins (Davis 2005: 233–36). Each year has seen a crisis, mostly involving the independence of the news operation, which suggests increasing ANC control. In 2002 and 2003, SABC Board Member responsible for News, Thami Mazwai, told a Parliamentary Committee that ideas of ‘objectivity’ and ‘the rights of the editor’ were no longer appropriate concepts, although he later did backtrack and defend editorial independence (Wasserman 2006: 256–57). In 2004, it was alleged that a policy had been adopted that President Mbeki and his ministers should appear at least four times in each news bulletin (Louw 2005: 91). In 2005, the Chief Executive resigned, together with a number of other senior figures prompting a major crisis of morale in the organisa- tion (Fray 2006: 99). In 2006, it refused to broadcast a documentary about President Mbeki, and it emerged that the Managing Director of News, Snuki Zikalala, had banned a number of critical commentators from broadcasting (Galant 2007: 62).

Taken together, this sequence of events suggests that SABC is being diverted from its obligations as a public broadcaster into something much closer to a voice of the government. Combined with the fact that the other major broadcasters, both in radio and television, owe their position to government policies on BEE, it might seem that there are parallels with the politicised state broadcasters of the former Communist countries. Up until recently, however, one would have to be careful not to overstate this case. The international bodies that claim to give comparative ratings of ‘press freedom’ rate South Africa quite highly (RSF 2008; RSF 2007; Freedom House 2007; Freedom House 2008). We should not take these ratings as scientifically valid, but they are indicators of a relative degree of media freedom.

More detailed analyses suggest that this freedom is relatively fragile. A study of the views of South African citizens concluded that: ‘Protection against political interference is guaranteed by law. In practice, however, there are doubts’ (Barratt et al. 2007: 175). Contrasting the situation with that prevailing during the apartheid years, they considered that ‘on the

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surface’ there was freedom of expression in South Africa but that in practice there were fears and worries that meant that it was exercised less freely in reality than appeared to be the case (Barratt et al. 2007: 161–62).

The conditions for this situation – both the government’s relative lack of interference in the broadcasters compared with earlier times and the reality that news and current affairs tended to support the government – were that the ANC was (a) so dominant that it faced no serious challenge from another party; and that (b) it was internally united. The former of these conditions remains true up until the time of writing, at least at the level of official politics, but the latter has come under increasing strain. As discussed above, the ANC has been able to dominate the ‘triple alliance’ that it has with COSATU and the SACP, and has been able demobilise the mass movements that characterised the end of the apartheid era. Given that the ANC pursues policies that have not seriously transformed the life situation of the mass of the black population, and given that both COSATU and the SACP have their base there, the alliance has always been a fraught one (Marais 201: 235).

The last few years have seen rising popular discontent, expressed in strikes (two million stopped work on 27 June 2005) and township move- ments (there were 881 in 2005) against evictions and for the delivery of basic services, but neither COSATU nor the SACP has been prepared to break with the ANC (Ceruti 2008: 110–11). What these increasing ten- sions did, however, was to provoke a split inside the ANC, with Jacob Zuma emerging as an alternative to Mbeki.

The leaders of COSATU and the SACP seized on this split as an opportunity to rebuild their influence and have backed Zuma as the ‘left’ candidate, although his credentials for that role are very unclear. The emergence of an alternative to the free-market line of Mbeki led in turn to an increase in popular mobilization (Ceruti 2008: 112). Given the very close interpenetration of these three organisations at the grass-roots level, increased militancy found expression inside the ANC as well: at the Polokwane congress in December 2007, Zuma won the party presidency by a clear majority. This victory provoked an intense conflict inside the ANC which, at the time of writing, had led to the resignation of Mbeki from the Presidency and a serious split inside the ANC.

This struggle has had an effect on broadcasting. In September 2002, COSATU led a march on SABC headquarters, accusing it of being pro- business and neglecting ‘blacks, the poor and the working class’ (cited in Guemede and Goodman 2003: 99). Despite claims that the media today are more open to critical voices, the criticism of the media as being simply the mouthpieces of the ANC and the rich have been increasingly heard from social movement activists (Barnett 2003: 182; Duncan 2006: 113–16). As the struggle inside the ANC developed, news and current affairs became an instrument. The CEO, Dali Mpofu, was appointed in 2005 and was immediately caught up in a political scandal when news footage of Zuma supporters heckling the ANC Deputy President, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngucka, at a rally was not broadcast (Fray 2006: 99). Both Mpofu and the Managing Director of News and Current Affairs, Snika Zikalala, came to be identified with the Mbeki faction in the run up to the Polokwane congress and it is widely believed that SABC news-reporting

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strongly favoured the President. On 22 December, shortly after his defeat, Mbeki named a new Board, consisting largely of strong supporters (Mail and Guardian 2007). This apparently united grouping split up during the first months of 2008. Mpofu suspended Zikalala and was then himself suspended by the Board. He fought back in court and has, at the time of writing, been suspended three times, with the final suspension currently under appeal (Mail and Guardian 2008b). While the exact issues over which this battle is being fought are not clear, most commentators regard it as part of an attempt by Mpofu to realign himself with the Zuma camp. Certainly, the SABC trade unions support him against the Board (Mail and Guardian 2008a).

The story with community broadcasting is less dramatic. We have seen how financial stringency placed most stations in a very difficult position. Increasingly, one way out of that situation has been to accept assistance from governmental agencies. While there is nothing wrong in principle with cooperation designed, for example, to address the difficult health sit- uation in South Africa, in fact what has occurred is that many community stations have effectively been captured by the local arms of government (Hadland and Thorne 2004: 81). Similarly, dependence upon scarce advertising income puts pressure on small scale media to avoid confronta- tion with local businesses.

The issue with the printed press has been different. Despite their own- ership, most newspapers have remained critical of the government and its policies. Newspapers with a predominantly white readership have tended not to back any party at elections, while those with a largely African read- ership have cautiously backed the ANC. In both groups, coverage of the ANC has predominated in elections (Davis 2005: 239). The real charge against the newspaper press is that, despite the changes in ownership, the papers have remained ‘white’ and that their criticisms of the ANC and other black organisations is, at root, racist.

Mandela had pointed out the ethnic limitations of the existing jour- nalists before he took up the presidency and worries about this issue con- tinued throughout his term of office as well as Mbeki’s (Tomaselli 2002: 145–58; Wasserman 2006: 261–62). The most dramatic confrontation took place in 1999–2000, when a number of black organisations com- plained to the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) about racism in the South African media. The SAHRC research that appeared to demonstrate the extent of racism in reporting in the main newspapers, although this finding was hotly contested both by journalists and academics (Tomselli 2000c; Olorunnisola 2006c; Olorunnisola 2006d; Steenveld 2007). However that may be, the inquiry did conclude that there was a problem, and it is difficult not to accept that this problem was concerned in large measure with race (Durrhein et al. 2005). Although there has subsequently been talk amongst ANC members of setting up their own newspaper to challenge these biases, partly at least because the discourse of ‘Africanism’ tends to equate criticism of the ANC with criti- cism of Africans, there has been no sustained government assault upon the printed press (Wasserman 2003; Olorunnisola 2006a). As we saw above, there has been a slow but definite shift in the composition of the journalistic workforce. There are now more journalists, and more editors,

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of the mainstream press who are Africans. Contrary to the desire and hope of the ANC leadership, this has not had any noticeable effect on the criti- cal nature of press coverage. The editor of the Mail and Guardian is no longer white and male. She is black and female, but the newspaper is still a home to critical reporting and writing.

Conclusions: how good a fit? There are clearly some strong similarities between the elite continuity model and the processes described above, but there are also some obvious discrepancies. If we examine the seven points in order, we can see how far the model can be generalised, and the extent to which we must modify it in order to do so.

1. The South African transition from dictatorship to democracy was as rapid and complete as any of the European examples. In common with most of those transitions, the changes were the result of negotiations between reformers in the old elite and moderates in the opposition. This transfor- mation took place within a society which was primarily market oriented and thus was not accompanied by any substantial change in the economic system.

2. There is considerable continuity in both institutions and personnel between the old regime and the new. This, indeed, was written into the transitional arrangements. In broadcasting, SABC was not privatised, remained at the centre of the media and retained a very high proportion of its existing personnel. Both broadcasting and the press already depended on advertising. The press shifted its ownership but retained the same core audience. The old titles continued to dominate the market, although like the formerly underground publication Gazeta Wyborcza in Poland, one of the oppositional titles in South Africa, the Mail and Guardian, also made the transition from opposition to respectability. New titles were introduced, concentrating on the down-market audience.

3. South Africa was already a market economy, but shifts of ownership within that framework were highly political. The licensing of the new commercial broadcasters, and changes in press ownership, depended upon political decisions. Success was dependent upon political connec- tions. Just as in China, many of the new ‘entrepreneurs’ are either party members, relatives of party members, or associated with party members.

4. Political interference in the media, particularly in broadcasting, has been present, but until recently it has not had the scale or the frequency of the post-communist examples. Initially at least, one reason for this lay in the establishment of a degree of internal democratic control over the making of news, which was more or less absent in Eastern Europe. The other reason is that there has not, up until 2008, been any substantial shift in the distribution of power comparable to the changes of govern- ment commonplace in Europe. As the struggle within the ANC has developed, however, a similar process has begun to emerge.

5. The change in South Africa certainly represented a political revolution. The way that the society was governed changed very rapidly, completely and irreversibly. There was, however, no comparable social revolution. The economic and social structure of the country has not experienced

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any comparable change and the main contours of wealth remain the same.

6. The relationship between elite continuity and elite renewal has been rather different in South Africa. While the old economic elite managed to retain the majority of its power, the old political elite has been swept away. There have been no re-elections of slightly reworked former rul- ing parties. Just as in the former Communist countries, however, the old economic elite has entered a partnership with the political elite and admitted some of its members.

7. South Africa is a clear example of a transition at the democratic end of the spectrum. Indeed, in many ways it is the best and clearest example of democratic transition, standing at the opposite pole to China. If the latter is a clear example that marketization does not lead necessarily to democratization, South Africa is a demonstration that both dictator- ship and democratization can be compatible with the market.

Taken together, this analysis demonstrates that South Africa has a fair degree of fit with the elite continuity model, but that it diverges sufficiently as to demand some modifications. Some of these arise from the different economic situation of the country, but others reveal limitations in the way that the model is formulated. The most important of these are:

• The extent of political interventions into the media is determined by the degree to which the political elite is divided. In most cases of societies undergoing rapid democratization, there have been sharp political divi- sions, with dozens of parties contending and power changing hands regu- larly. In those cases, control of the media is one weapon in the political struggle, and the most powerful group attempts to seize it. South Africa has been a very unusual case in that although there are many parties and regular, free, elections, one party has enjoyed fourteen years of unchal- lenged power. With no realistic threat to its dominance, close control of the media was unnecessary. It is only with the emergence of a genuine split within the political elite that broadcasting has become a stake in the power struggle.

• Elite renewal has been very prominent in the South African case. This is because of the complete marginalization of the old political elite and the dominance of a new political elite organised in the ANC. As a con- sequence, the process of renewing the economic elite has been much more open than the various forms of sharp practice that marked the post-communist transitions. The new entrants into the economic elite are present as an explicit result of government policy. As has been noted, the immediate precedent for these economic policies, and for the responses of the established economic elite, are to be found in the NP’s efforts to use state power to develop Afrikaner capitalism. The use of political power to initiate or accelerate renewal of the economic elite appears to be independent of political forms.

• The most striking result of examining the South African case, however, is that it demonstrates what is missing from earlier iterations of the model. This transition was marked by a high level of mass mobilization, which continues to find echoes today. The popular struggle was at least

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as intense as that experienced against any Communist regime, and it continued up to and through the transitional period itself. The great ris- ings against the Communists were in 1956, 1968 and 1980–81. By the time of the transition, the organisations thrown up in those battles, even in Poland, were largely demobilised. Transition was negotiated between the elites. In South Africa, the masses had a voice. At the general level, this explains why political life in South Africa is so much more sophisti- cated and concerned with social inclusion than elsewhere. In the case of the media, it not only helps to explain the degree to which the main institutions experienced internal democratization but also why there has been a struggle between purely commercial criteria and the desire to reach under-represented groups. It is true that over time commercial criteria are becoming more and more dominant, but it is salutary to be reminded that the chances of genuinely inclusive democratization depend upon the extent to which that process is an act of self-liberation rather than a by-product of elite manoeuvring. The desire to radically democratise the media, along with the rest of the social structure, is one that flourishes only in periods of mass agitation.

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Suggested citation Sparks, C. (2009), ‘South African media in transition’, Journal of African Media

Studies 1: 2, pp. 195–220, doi: 10.1386/jams.1.2.195/1

Contributor details Colin Sparks is Professor of Media Studies and Director of the Communication and Media Research Institute at the University of Westminster. His most recent book is Globalization, Development and the Mass Media (Sage 2007). He is currently working on a book on the media and the transition to democracy.

Contact: Communication and Media Research Institute, University of Westminster, Harrow Campus, HA1 3TP, Middlesex, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

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