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Reading the Sowetan's Mediation of the Public's READING THE SOWETAN’S MEDIATION OF THE PUBLIC’S RESPONSE TO THE JACOB ZUMA RAPE TRIAL: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Alison Stent A mini-thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies, Rhodes University Supervisor: Dr Jeanne Prinsloo December 2007 ii ABSTRACT Reading the Sowetan’s mediation of the public’s response to the Jacob Zuma rape trial: A critical discourse analysis Alison Stent MA minithesis, Department of Journalism and Media Studies, Rhodes University 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. December 2007 iii DECLARATION I declare that Reading the Sowetan’s mediation of the public’s response to the Jacob Zuma rape trial: A critical discourse analysis is my own work, that it has not been submitted before for any degree or examination in any other university, and that all the sources I have used or quoted have been indicated and acknowledged as complete references. Alison Stent December 2007 Signed: ________________________ iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My grateful thanks to the Netherlands Institute for Southern Africa (NiZa) for their generous grant, which enabled me to take some leave from a high-pressure job and get some thinking done. Without that I may never have finished this project. I am enormously grateful to my supervisor, Dr Jeanne Prinsloo, for her clarity, incisiveness, inspirational passion and sense of humour – and not least for her intuitive knowledge about when to be supportive and encouraging, when to back off and leave me to my own devices, and when to be a tough ‘supervisor from hell’. Thanks to my parents, my brother Warwick and all my friends, especially Joan and Lynda, for their warmth, support and faith in me, and my sister Carol for hers, as well as for a stern and insightful reading of an early draft that got me back on track again. Thanks to Bazil Raubach for the steady positive regard and flashes of brilliance that turned things upside down, completely, more than once. Thanks to the Daily Dispatch for all the printouts, and for a job that has taught me so much. Last but far from least, my friend Jo-anne Driver. Loyalty, clarity, generosity, time, effort, willingness to engage with the text and talk things through (even when it was through flu). Patience, creativity, honesty, courage and unwavering belief in my abilities, whether I deserved it or not. What a friend. Lucky, lucky me. v CONTENTS CHAPTER SECTION PAGE Title page i Abstract ii Declaration iii Acknowledgements iv Contents v List of Appendices vii List of tables and charts viii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION The scope of the study 1 The significance of the study 2 The context of the study 2 Political context 2 Media context 4 Structure of the study 4 CHAPTER TWO: ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK 6 Introduction 6 Foucault and the social constructivist 7 approach to representation Discourse and knowledge 8 Power and truth 9 The subject 10 Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of meaning 11 Terms and concepts 12 The construction of identity 14 Laclau’s theory of populism 17 Differential and equivalential modes of 17 articulation The anti-institutional nature of populism 19 Representation in populist discourse 20 Power and resistance in Africa 22 Citizen and subject 22 Human rights, ethnic custom and the struggle 23 for social justice in Africa Redress and redistribution 24 Post-colonial South Africa 26 Human rights, ethnic custom and social justice 27 in South Africa The class question 28 Conclusion 32 vi CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY 33 Introduction 33 Research question 33 Methodological considerations 34 Methods 36 Thematic content analysis 36 Critical discourse analysis 42 Conclusion 46 CHAPTER FOUR: ANALYSIS 47 Introduction 47 Overview of letters and pictures 47 Theme 1: Representations of protests outside 51 court Introduction 51 Order and disorder in the pictures 52 Diverse groupings in the pictures 55 Foregrounding of women and customary 57 performance Representations of the supporters in the letters 58 Theme 2: Representations of gender justice 61 4.1 Gender justice in the pictures 61 4.2 Gender justice in the letters 63 Theme 3: Representations of the succession race 65 5.1 Succession in the pictures 66 5.2 Succession in the letters 67 Theme 4: Role of the media 69 Conclusion 72 CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION 76 Introduction 76 The class faultline 77 The gender faultline 80 Bibliography 83 Appendices vii LIST OF APPENDICES APPENDIX DESCRIPTION PAGE SOURCE APPENDIX 1 Table of pictures 35 Database APPENDIX 2 Table of letters 35 Database APPENDIX 3 Chronology charts 41 Database APPENDIX 4 Date and theme charts 50 Database APPENDIX 5 ‘Accuser now the accused’ 52 Sowetan 29 Mar 06: 6-7 APPENDIX 6 ‘Sex bill gets its day today’ 53 Sowetan 3 May: 4 APPENDIX 7 ‘Zuma’s Folly’ 54 Sowetan 10 Mar: 19 APPENDIX 8 ‘Strong stand’ 55 Sowetan 14 Feb: 5 APPENDIX 9 ‘Fund fun’ 55 Sowetan 8 May: 4 APPENDIX 10 ‘Weeping’ 56 Sowetan 8 May: 7 APPENDIX 11 ‘Take that’ 57 Sowetan 4 Apr: 4 APPENDIX 12 ‘Purification’ 57 Sowetan 16 Mar: 6 APPENDIX 13 ‘Campaign trail’ 63 Sowetan 22 May: 13 APPENDIX 14 ‘Viva JZ’ 66 Sowetan 7 Apr: 6 APPENDIX 15 Leader page 80 Sowetan 22 Mar: 12 viii LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS TABLE DESCRIPTION PAGE Table 1: First tier categories: Issues in letters to the editor 39 Table 2: Second tier categories: Themes in letters to the editor 40 CHART DESCRIPTION PAGE Chart 1: Chronological overview of data 50 Chart 2: Thematic overview of data 50 Chart 3: Anti-Zuma position’s chains of meaning 72 Chart 4: Pro-Zuma position’s chains of meaning 73 1 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION The scope of the study The rape trial of then-ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma in the Johannesburg High Court between mid-February and early May 2006 stirred intense public interest and received extensive attention from the news media, even at times making international news. 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. The rape complainant, an overnight guest at Zuma’s Johannesburg home in November 2005, was an HIV-positive Aids activist half his age, whose father had been Zuma’s comrade during South Africa’s liberation struggle against apartheid. Zuma at the time was head of the council that advises the government on HIV-Aids policy, a married man and head of a “moral regeneration” programme aimed at promoting safe sexual practice. Although this combination generated considerable outrage, Zuma’s popularity with South Africa’s masses appeared not dented but enhanced, to the point where his accuser was symbolically executed by his supporters. In addition the party’s youth league and two partners in governance, Cosatu and the SACP, gave him their open and fervent support, even announcing their intention to nominate him as the country’s next president. The Sowetan, a national daily tabloid, is one of South Africa’s largest black-oriented daily newspapers. This study, a mini-thesis in fulfilment of 35% of a Masters degree, explores the Sowetan’s mediation of the contestation between Zuma’s supporters and those of his rape accuser from a gender and class perspective. Since it is specifically the South African public’s response to the trial that is under the microscope, I focus on the Sowetan’s pictures of the contestation outside the court (particularly those representing body performance and messages on clothes and posters) and letters to its editor about the trial, thus deliberately excluding journalists’ news reports and commentary to isolate the 2 ‘voices’ of the citizenry. I first undertake a rudimentary thematic content analysis of this material to gain a ‘broad descriptive sweep’ of it before conducting a critical discourse analysis.
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