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Apart from historical and contextual factors complicating the mining industry, Lonmin Platinum’smanagement of employee relationships was further complicated by its diverse workforce ofapproximately 20 000 employees consisting of literates, semi-literates and illiterates. In addition,the company comprised five business units, each with their own corporate identity. Within thiscontext it was expected that Lonmin’s relationship with its employees would take some strain.While the relationship between corporate image and stakeholder management has been debated,the impact of symbolic corporate identity elements on specific relationship dimensions has not yetbeen investigated and is addressed in this article by means of the following research question:What is the relationship between employees’ perceptions of symbolic corporate identity elementsand employer-employee relationships at Lonmin Platinum? This study indicated a relationship between employees’ perceptions of how effectively the company reached it objectives, specifically a safe working environment, a healthy working environment,socio-economic empowerment and accountability, and the quality of its employee relationships.

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The Steyn and Puth (2000) model for strategic communication management has been applied bystudents and other project participants to non-profit organisations (NPOs), government institutionsand small and medium enterprises in South Africa, but organisations’ communication practiceshave not been measured against the model. This paper reports on the strategic communicationmanagement practices of NPOs in the adult-literacy sector in South Africa, as compared withthe strategic steps in the Steyn and Puth model. The aim of this study was to analyse currentcommunication practices in the adult-literacy sector of South African NPOs in terms of the normative,theoretical Steyn and Puth model for strategic communication management. The purpose wasto understand the participating NPOs’ operational and strategic communication managementcontext, since little research in this regard has to date been conducted. Recommendations forstrategic communication management and relationship building by NPOs are also made.

The democratization developments in Africa during the 19905 (and not the least in South Africa) offered new opportunities for researchers in the field of news flow studies. Since the 19505, a number of studies have been undertaken internationally, but relatively few comparative studies were done in Africa since 1990. The end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall demand not only new cartographic and conceptual maps, but also new news media maps, espeially of Africa. In this article, a broad question is posed: "How does South African mass media portray South Africa and the rest of the world in the 19905 through the process of international news coverage?' This article deals with some possible answers to this question as it pertains to specific newspapers and broadcast news in the country. The general goal was to provide answers to some of the questions set out in the international project on Global NewsFlow in the 1990s for the period 3-9 and 17-23 September 1995. Aspects such as main news topics,main news events, datelines and sources of international news were, amongst others, addressed. This article is based on papers presented as part of an international research) to the International Communication Association, Chicago, USA, 23-27 May 1996; the 20th International Association for Mass Communication Research Conference, Sydney, Australia, 18- 22 August, 1996; and an international symposium on 'Culture, Communication, and Development,organized (inter alia) by the Unit for Social Communication at the Human Sciences Research Council, and the World Commission on Culture and Development of Unesco, HSRC Building, Pretoria, 29-31 August 1996.