Looking at listening: gender and race in commercial advertising for radio sets in Southern Africa from the 1950s to the 1970s
October 2023
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Journal article
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Journal of African Cultural Studies
This article takes a visual approach to the study of an aural medium. It
argues that the radio set had a powerful visual presence in popular
culture in Southern Africa between the 1950s and the 1970s when
most people bought their first radio sets. Advertisements for radios
carried by the press offer the most prominent examples of this
iconography. In South Africa, Rhodesia and Zambia, radio
advertisements developed a distinctive aesthetic that blended
global and local influences and framed the relationship between
the new technology and society. Although the radio set was
presented as part of a forward-looking, ostensibly inclusive vision
of modernity, sales strategies also served to associate radio with
whiteness and masculinity by looking backwards to the racial and
gendered hierarchies of the colonial past. The homogeneity of
advertising on both sides of the liberation divide demonstrates the
pervasive cultural influence of settler colonialism both before and
after formal decolonisation.
FFR
Transnational news audiences and the limits of cultural decolonisation in Zambia: media coverage of the Soweto uprising of 1976
July 2021
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Journal article
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Journal of Southern African Studies
This article takes news coverage of the Soweto uprising of 1976 as a case study to demonstrate the influence of South Africa and Britain on the media in post-colonial Zambia. In part, this can be accounted for by the growing popularity of Radio Republic of South Africa (RSA) among listeners in Zambia, particularly in regions that were on the front line of the liberation struggle. RSA defended the actions of the South African police, as did the BBC World Service. Remarkably, Zambia’s own press and broadcast services also took a similar line at times, thanks to their reliance on Reuters news agency, which, in turn, made uncritical use of South African government sources. However, by reading news content in the light of audience research data, it is argued that, in other ways, Zambian independence represented a meaningful departure from the colonial past. Decolonisation enabled the development of a more pluralistic culture of news consumption, a trend further encouraged by an international boom in transistor-radio sales with short-wave capability. Zambia’s news culture also illustrated the limits of one-party rule. Although Kenneth Kaunda sought to emulate the stifled atmosphere of the Northern Rhodesian media, it proved impossible in the changed circumstances of the later 1960s and 1970s.
Radio soundings: South Africa and the black modern
October 2020
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Journal article
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South African Historical Journal
FFR
The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire. Edited by Martin Thomas and Andrew S. Thompson. Oxford University Press. 2018. xiii + 775pp. £95.00
June 2020
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Journal article
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History
Book review.
FFR
Les mauvais remèdes de la lutte contre le sida: Kim Dionne 'Doomed Interventions: The Failure of Global Responses to AIDS in Africa' (revue).
August 2018
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Journal article
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Phébé
Duncan Sandys and the Informal Politics of Britain’s Late Decolonisation
November 2017
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Book
This book will appeal to students of decolonisation and twentieth-century British politics alike. This book throws new light on the impact of informal ‘old boy’ networks on British decolonisation.
History
Afrique du Sud, les choix fatidiques: Ralph Mathekga 'When Zuma Goes' (revue).
July 2017
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Journal article
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Phébé
India, post-imperialism and the origins of Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood’ speech
August 2007
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Journal article
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Historical Journal
In January 2003 Enoch Powell's personal archive was opened to the public. The release shed new light on the nature of Powell's thought on immigration, and in particular, his reasons for making the so-called ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech of 1968. Historians have suggested that Powell's primary concern was a post-imperialist desire to sever all links with the New Commonwealth. However, papers written immediately after Powell's time in India (1943–6) reveal that his objections to immigration were established long before he abandoned his fierce love of empire in 1954. These objections were rooted in a seemingly liberal commitment to national homogeneity as a prerequisite for democracy. The imagery, reasoning, and political context of Powell's speeches in 1968 demonstrate a striking continuity with his ideas of 1946. Powell's example suggests that British attitudes to mass immigration may owe more to the experience of empire than to post-war changes in national identity.