Page 180 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

increasingly guided the protection of related constitutional principles (Richards
1999, 14). However, the structural connections between free speech and reli-
gious freedom or liberty can be noted (ibid., 9). Almost all African states have
included in their constitutions a bill of rights (van der Vyver 1999, 110). Reli-
gious freedom features prominently in one form or another in those constitu-
tions, although it is often subject to various conditions. The media sphere con-
stitutes a critical “test site” where the interpretation and implementation of
these “new” rights can be publicly evaluated by all concerned.

Contestation and Consultation: The Story of
Religious Broadcasting in South Africa
South Africa offers an illuminating case for considering the relation be-
tween religion, media, and the public sphere. Since the ¤rst universal franchise
election in 1994, there has been a widespread effort at every level of society “to
introduce new and better, more democratic, more demographically equitable,
more politically and gender sensitive ways of doing things” (Teer-Tomaselli
and Tomaselli 2001, 123). There has been an accompanying debate about how
to manage cultural diversity in a way that re®ects constitutional ideals (“united
in . . . diversity”) and does not evoke negative historical memory (Tayob 1998).
The reform of the media has been central to these sociopolitical changes in the
“new South Africa,” for, in the words of leading media analysts Ruth Teer-
Tomaselli and Keyan Tomaselli, “newspapers, magazines, television and radio
are both the sites and the instruments of transformation” (Teer-Tomaselli and
Tomaselli 2001, 123). As “sites” of transformation, the structures, management,
ownership, and workforce of the media industries have been subject to debate
and reform. As “instruments” of transformation, the media provide the plat-
forms for debate, the stories, the images and visions of personal and national
identity, both real and ideal.
Within the contested power relations of the mass-mediated public sphere,
religious broadcasting policy and practice constitute a signi¤cant micro-sphere.
Given the former close ties between the apartheid regime and the Dutch Re-
formed Church, the reapportioning of airtime for the country’s diverse religious
groups has been a key element in the refashioning of the South African state.
David Chidester highlights the transformation in state broadcasting as offering
not just “new possibilities for broadening the representation of South African
religious communities in public media” but also as a “growth area for the future
of the study of religion in South Africa” with its critical potential for “analyzing
symbols, myths, and rituals that generate powerful moods and motivations”
and engaging structures of power (Chidester 1998, 17–18).
Under apartheid, the SABC, as a tool of the state, offered only Christian
programming. Despite the political constraints of the time, several religious
broadcasters objected to the juxtaposition of news and religious programs as a

Mediated Religion in South Africa 169