Page 211 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

196 Marleen de Witte

widely known. Being the only religious group granted airspace on state
radio, its weekly radio broadcast, in which Damuah explained Afrikania’s
objectives and ideologies, reached a large audience throughout the nation.
The shifting relations between the media, the state, and religion, however,
have complicated Afrikania’s access to the media and have altered the
frames and formats upon which Afrikania can draw in its efforts at self-
representation. Due to Afrikania’s loss of government support and the
commercialization of the media scene, Afrikania now has to pay for air-
time just as any other religious organization, but does not have the means
to do so. It thus tries to find other ways into the media, most notably
speaking in radio and TV talk shows, inviting the press to newsworthy
Afrikania events and press conferences, sending letters to the editors, and
being the subject of TV documentaries (De Witte 2005). With these media
formats, however, Afrikania depends on the goodwill and interests of jour-
nalists and media houses. It has hardly any control over the messages and
images they produce, nor over the audiences and possible clienteles that
their media productions reach.
Whereas in its early days, Afrikania’s representational strategies were
mainly to talk about ATR as an ideological source, it is now more than ever
concerned with public image, with making ATR look as nice, clean, and

Figure 8.3 Afrikania Mission altar during the inauguration of the headquarters
(March 2002). Photo by the author.