Media, Race and Capital: A Decolonial Analysis of Representation of Miners’ Strikes in South Africa

Researching Protest Policing in South Africa: A Discourse Analysis of the Police–Researcher Encounter

“…Marikana signified both the breakdown of public order policing and the changes that post-apartheid protest policing has undergone (Marks and Bruce, 2015). While much of the initial media reporting in the aftermath of the Marikana Massacre favoured police accounts, ignored the voices of the miners, and failed to expose the extent of police violence (Duncan, 2014;Chiumbu, 2016), select investigative journalists (e.g. Marinovich 2012), a documentary film, and several academics (e.g.…”

“…Alexander et al, 2013) published work highlighting SAPS' role in instigating the violence. This coverage shifted perceptions of protest policing in media spaces and among the general public (Duncan, 2014;Chiumbu, 2016). Resultantly, the policing of protest in South Africa has faced substantial scrutiny (Brooks, 2019).…”

Decolonising Political Communication in Africa

“…In South Africa, coloniality of knowledge came into sharp focus during recent student protests calling for the decolonisation of the curriculum (Ndlovu, 2018). In the media, coloniality of knowledge is intimately linked with representation and voice (Chiumbu, 2016). Traditional media is often complicit in the cognitive injustice of representing members of marginalised groups as backward, irrational or unproductive (see Santos, 2012).…”

In the Service of Press Freedom or the Imperial Agenda? Negotiating Repression and Coloniality in Zimbabwean Journalism

“…This paper seeks to offer a critique of different ideas of media freedom and media activism in Zimbabwe. Taking up the challenge to rethink the deployment of theory and methods in African media scholarship, I start by theorising what a decolonial idea of media activism in Zimbabwe today would look like (Mutsvairo, 2018;Moyo andMutsvairo, 2018, Chasi andRodny-Gumede, 2018;Chiumbu, 2016). I then make a historical case based on the competing visions of the normative expectations of Zimbabwean media performance, to illustrate what media freedom has meant in Zimbabwe since independence in 1980.…”

“…The Zimbabwean government foresaw this and wanted to pre-empt it. To appreciate how the liberal understanding of media freedom is insufficient for a postcolonial country like Zimbabwe, we need to embrace a decolonial approach (Mutsvairo, 2018;Moyo andMutsvairo, 2018, Chasi andRodny-Gumede, 2018;Chiumbu, 2016). To imagine a decolonial press freedom is to think beyond the current liberal rooted conceptions of media freedom.…”