Academic literature on the topic 'Press digest (Johannesburg, South Africa)'

Review of: Jane Duncan, The rise of the securocrats, Johannesburg, Jacana Media, 2014 (ISBN-10: 1431410756) Jane Duncan, Protest nation: The right to protest in South Africa, Pietermaritzburg, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2016 (ISBN-10: 186914323X)

Review of: Jane Duncan, The rise of the securocrats, Johannesburg, Jacana Media, 2014 (ISBN-10: 1431410756) Jane Duncan, Protest nation: The right to protest in South Africa, Pietermaritzburg, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2016 (ISBN-10: 186914323X)

Despite the bad press surrounding the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), the outcomes of the event confirm that WSSD served to reinvigorate global commitments and actions to sustainable development.The Summit, which took place from 26 August - 4 September 2002 in Johannesburg, South Africa, aimed to review progress made towards Sustainable Development over the past 10 years and to work towards commitments to action (UN General Assembly Resolution 55/199). It saw the largest ever gathering of world leaders and over 21,000 participants from 191 government, intergovernmental and non-government organisations, the private sector, academia and the scientific community (IISD, 2002). The mere presence of these stakeholders, willing to engage in the negotiation process, demonstrates that sustainable development is very much alive and relevant.President Thabo Mbeki opened by characterising the growing gap between North and South as “global apartheid” and highlighting the crises of poverty and ecological degradation. It was clear then that the outcomes of the Summit had to go beyond the Rio 1992 commitments which focused on environmental actions. He called for a practicable and meaningful Johannesburg Plan of Implementation to fulfil the framework of Agenda 21 within the Summit theme of “People, Planet and Prosperity”.

Howard Phillips, UCT under Apartheid: Part I, From Onset to Sit-in, 1948-1968 Jacana Media, Johannesburg, 2019 407 pp ISBN 978-1-9282-3285-8 R359 (hardcover) Howard Phillips is one of South Africa's pre-eminent academic historians, best known for his meticulous pioneering research on the social history of medicine in South Africa. Latterly, since the arrival of Coronavirus, he has enjoyed a public profile as a widely consulted expert on the history of pandemics. In addition, however, Phillips is the premier historian of the University of Cape Town (UCT), a graduate of that university, and a member of its staff in the Department of History. Intimately involved with UCT over decades, in 1993 he was the author of The University of Cape Town, 1918-1948: The Formative Years (UCT Press] and we are grateful that one of its sequels has now been published. This most recent account of the two decades that follow is an important book, well written and insightful, and a powerful reminder to us that universities in South Africa, as elsewhere, are reflections of current society but also embryos of future society - our mirrors: past, present and future.

C.W. de Kiewiet's A History of South Africa Social and Economic, published by Oxford University Press in 1941, remains one of the most-used general histories of that country. No other single work by a professional historian on South Africa has been so influential, so often cited and quoted. Yet few readers of the book have known anything about its author's career or about the circumstances under which it was written. “Before you study the history,” advises E.H. Carr in What is History?, “study the historian,” to which he adds: “Before you study the historian, study his historical and social environment.” In this short paper all that can be done is to say something of the historian, and of how he came to write his book. This is, then, the history of A History.Born in Holland in 1902, C.W. de Kiewiet was taken by his parents to South Africa the following year. He grew up in Johannesburg and attended the University College, which from 1922 was known as Wits. There he studied under W.M. Macmillan, the Professor of History, who was then working on the papers of the missionary John Philip and beginning to prepare what would become his two classic works, The Cape Colour Question and Bantu, Boer, and Briton. Macmillan supervised the thesis on the Cape northern frontier which de Kiewiet completed for his M.A. degree in 1924.

Executive directors’ remuneration of leading South African companies often attracts the attention of the press, shareholders and unions. The research on which this article is based investigated whether executive directors’ remuneration of the Top 100 companies listed on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE) is influenced by the implementation of certain corrective corporate governance measures. The remuneration of executive directors was regressed on a number of firm and corporate governance characteristics to determine whether these characteristics have an influence on executive directors ’remuneration. It was found that corporate governance reforms relating to institutional ownership, the number of non-executive directors on the remuneration committee, shareholder voting on the remuneration policy and the number of remuneration committee meetings act as an effective governance tool to protect shareholders’ interests with regard to some of the elements of executive directors’ remuneration.

South Africa has long been associated with racial and ethnic issues surrounding prejudice and discrimination and despite a move post-1994 to a democratic ‘rainbow nation’ society, the country has remained plagued by unequal power relations. One such instance of inequality relates to the marginalisation of migrants which has been realised through xenophobic attitudes and actions, most notably the violence that swept across the country in 2008. Several reasons have been suggested in an attempt to explain the cause of the violence, including claims that migrants are taking ‘our jobs and our women’, migrants are ‘illegal and criminal’ and bringing ‘disease and contamination’ with them from their countries of origin. Although widely accepted that many, if not all, of these beliefs are based on ignorance and hearsay, these extensive generalisations shape and reinforce prejudiced ideologies about migrant communities. It is thus only when confronted with evidence that challenges this dominant discourse, that South Africans are able to reconsider their views. Williams (2008) suggests that for many South Africans, Africa continues to be the ‘dark continent’ that is seen as an ominous, threatening force of which they have very little knowledge. For this reason, anti-immigrant sentiment in a South African context has traditionally been directed at African foreigners. In this study I examine the ways in which African migrants and migrant communities, as well as the overall processes of migration, are depicted by selected South African print media: City Press, Mail & Guardian and Sunday Times. Using a combined Corpus Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis approach, I investigate the following questions: How are migrants and the process of migration into South Africa represented by these established newspapers between 2006 and 2010? Are there any differences or similarities between these representations? In particular, what ideologies regarding migrants and migrant communities underlie these representations? My analysis focuses on the landscape of public discourse about migration with an exploration of the rise and fall of the terminologies used to categorise migrants and the social implications of these classifications. Additionally, I analyse the expansive occurrences of negative representations of migrants, particularly through the use of ‘othering’ pronouns ‘us’ versus ‘them’ and through the use of metaphorical language which largely depicts these individuals as en masse natural disasters. I conclude that these discursive elements play a crucial role in contributing to an overall xenophobic rhetoric. Despite subtle differences between the three newspapers which can be accounted for based on their political persuasions and agendas, it is surprising to note how aligned these publications are with regard to their portrayal of migrants. With a few exceptions, this representation positions these individuals as powerless and disenfranchised and maintains the status quo view of migrants as burdens on the South African economy and resources. Overall, the newspaper articles contribute to mainstream dominant discourse on migrants and migration with the underlying ideology that migrants are responsible for the hardships suffered by South African citizens. Thus, this study contributes significantly to existing bodies of research detailing discourse on migrants and emphasises the intrinsic links between language, ideology and society.

In this minithesis I conduct a critical discourse analysis to take on a double-pronged task. On the one hand I explore the social phenomenon of the contestation between supporters of then-ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma and supporters of his rape accuser. The trial, which took place in the Johannesburg High Court between mid-February and early May 2006, stirred intense public interest, both locally and internationally. The performance of thousands of Zuma’s supporters and a far smaller number of gender rights lobby groups, both of whom kept a presence outside the court building throughout the trial, received similar attention. Second, I examine how the Sowetan, a national daily tabloid with a black, middle-class readership, mediated the trial through pictures of the theatre outside the court and letters to the editor. The study is informed by post-Marxist and cultural studies perspectives, both approaches that are concerned with issues of power, ideology and the circulation of meaning within specific sociocultural contexts. A rudimentary thematic content analysis draws out some of the main themes from the material, while the critical discourse analysis is located within a theoretical framework based on concepts from Laclau & Mouffe’s theory of meaning, which assumes a power struggle between contesting positions seeking to invalidate one another and to either challenge or support existing hegemonies. This is further informed by, first, Laclau’s theorisation of populism, which assumes that diverse groupings can unite under a demagogue’s banner in shared antagonism towards existing power, and second, by concepts from Mamdani’s theorisation of power and resistance in colonial and post-colonial Africa, which explicates three overarching ideological discourses of human rights, social justice and traditional ethnic practices. The study, then, explores how these three discourses were operationalised by the localised contestations over the trial.

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Art in Journalism and Media Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2016
This is a story of undocumented migrants’ journeys between Malawi and Johannesburg, exposing the challenges they face and the corruption that takes place along the borders. Modern migration between the two countries has taken place for close to two hundred years. In the past, migrants, most of whom worked in the mines, were protected by law and that eased their movements. These days, low skilled migrants do not qualify for work permits so they stay in the country illegally. The South African law qualifies such migrants as undesirable visitors and bans them from returning to the country for some time. This research project documents how such migrants return home and come back to South Africa even before their bans expire. The research exposes how the migrants are aided by corrupt officers at the borders. The story shows how some of the migrants utilised a weakness in the old Malawi identification and passport system to obtain new travel documents under false names and return to South Africa undetected. This research project adopted an ethnographic approach. The findings are presented in a longform narrative story, which forms the first part of this document. The story is accompanied by a method document, which provides the theoretical framework and explains the methodology.
GR2017

Text in English
This thesis investigates whether or not the press reported unethically on South Africa’s 2014 General Elections in the weekly national newspapers the City Press, Sunday Times and the Mail & Guardian. This study was undertaken on the basis of the ongoing contention between the press and the state which has resulted in polarised positions between both institutions amid accusations of press bias. It has given voice to measures to regulate the press through a Media Appeals Tribunal (MAT) and proposed state regulation. This could negatively impact free speech, public interest and ultimately democracy. This researcher contends that this will not be in the best interest of South Africa. Through this study, it is argued that an ethical press that executes a libertarian duty to society, integrating a watchdog role over the state, while simultaneously overseeing its social responsibility to society, upholds the welfare of society and democracy and should therefore not be regulated by the state. The elections thus forms an important platform for the press to demonstrate unbiased ethical reportage to the state in the wake of being regulated and prove its fundamental role in society’s interest and democracy. Therefore, to determine whether the election coverage was ethical or unethical, the problem investigated whether the press, that is, the print medium in the form of the newspaper, reported truthfully, in a balanced manner and independently for South Africa’s 2014 General Elections, upholding its watchdog and social responsibility roles. This was done through a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of the front-page news reports of the aforementioned national newspapers for the cross sectional time-frame of 13 April to 11 May, 2014. This study argues that language is the most important channel of communication for the exchange of ideas and can be used as an instrument to calculatedly manipulate message and reinforce a particular viewpoint. Hence, it contends that CDA can effectively be utilised as a conceptual framework for language analysis to determine unethical press coverage by journalists. The study identifies and applies two significant theoretical models that is, the Libertarian and Social Responsibility models for the elections which further serves as a form of triangulation to verify the results of the CDA. The study challenges the conventions of a distinct libertarian or a social responsibility model for the press, arguing that both models are not mutually exclusive for the elections. The analysis shows that the press apply both social responsibility and libertarian roles simultaneously in election reporting. It further maps out the incorporation of the developmental journalism model where the press upholds the best interests of both the electorate and the state ethically, without the requirement of a state-regulated media.
Communication Science
M.A. (Communication Science)