South Africa’s media have done good work with 30 years of freedom but need more diversity
IN 1992, two years before the end of apartheid, Nelson Mandela bemoaned the state of South Africa’s print media. He said the media’s domination by middle-class males from the minority white population posed the biggest threat to freedom of expression in the country. The same year, the African National Congress under his leadership adopted a media charter calling for all citizens to be empowered with the necessary information and contesting views to make informed choices. “An ignorant society cannot be democratic,” it declared. We asked Prinola Govenden, a media and communications senior lecturer at the University of Johannesburg, what became…