Page 191 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

and capitalism in one of the world’s most strategic nation-states. Yet the story
of this “rainbow nation,” to use Archbishop Tutu’s enduring symbol, and its
quest to balance democratic nationalism with cultural and religious pluralism,
and what Achille Mbembe calls “struggles over autochthony,” is clearly far from
over. 45

Notes

I am grateful to Keyan Tomaselli and Ruth Teer-Tomaselli for their critical reading of
this essay, and to Paul du Plessis for obtaining the SABC illustrations.
1. Both the U.S. State Department Annual Report on International Religious Free-
dom (http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/) and an earlier survey of how religious freedom
is understood, protected, or denied around the world (Boyle and Sheen1997) highlight
the importance of the media in this connection.
2. See the special issue of Nova Religio 4, no. 2 (2001) on this topic; see also Lucas
and Robbins 2004.
3. Two excellent sources are Human Rights Without Frontiers, particularly their
news service on “Religious Intolerance and Discrimination” (http://www.hrwf.net), and
Index on Censorship (http://www.indexonline.org).
4. Also of note are the annotated bibliographies on the different religious traditions
of South Africa compiled by David Chidester and his team at the Institute for Compara-
tive Religion in South Africa, University of Cape Town (Chidester, Tobler, and Wratten
1997a, 1997b; Chidester et al. 1997).
5. On “Media and Human Rights,” see the special issue of Critical Arts: A Journal
for South-North Cultural and Media Studies 16 (2001). Available online at http://www.
und.ac.za/und/ccms/publications default.htm.
6. But see Fardon and Furniss 2000 for the diversi¤cation of radio broadcasting
across the African continent. It is regrettable that such a useful work could not include
any serious treatment of religious radio stations, long active in many parts of Africa.
7. This is af¤rmed by Knut Lundby (1997, 38) for rural Zimbabwe at least in his
comparative study of media, religion, and democratic participation in two small-scale
communities, located at a distance from metropolitan centers in Zimbabwe and Norway.
8. See, for example, Ilesanmi 2001; Mutua 1999, 2001; An-Na’im 1990, 1999. On
southern Africa there is an abundance of sources: Ackermann 1992; Boschman 1996;
Chidester 1994; Dlamini 1994; Gruchy 1995; Kilian 1993; Mamdani 2000; Mitchell 1993;
Moosa 2001; van der Westhuizen 1993; Villa-Vicencio 1996, 1999–2000; Walsh and Kauf-
mann 1999; Villa-Vicencio 1992.
9. See the series on Proselytism published by the Law and Religion Program at
Emory Law School, and especially the volume on Africa (An-Na’im 1999).
10. Although it should be noted that for many years the religious broadcasting de-
partment formed part of Television News Productions (Baker 2000, 232).
11. Cf. similar efforts by the powerful coalition, the Campaign for Independent
Broadcasting, to ensure that the SABC was wrested from the control of the old National
Party apartheid regime and instead serve as a tool for diversity and democracy (Minnie
2000). For excellent analytical overviews of the contours and ideological battles of the

180 Rosalind I. J. Hackett