South Africa

In South Africa, a country on the southern tip of the African continent, apartheid, Afrikaans for the doctrine of racial separateness, was made law in 1948, almost 300 years after the arrival of European colonialists. Official apartheid ended in 1994 when Black majority rule was introduced. Postapartheid South Africa is characterized by economic disparities, with the economy and land ownership largely concentrated in White hands, even though the constitution of South Africa has provided for economically empowering Blacks. The media landscape in South Africa, like its democracy, is far from reflecting the current political dispensation in terms of ownership and concentration. In postapartheid South Africa, the role of the media and citizen participation, especially with regard to some salient debates on the state of the ...