Marikana in translation : print nationalism in South Africa's multilingual press

Abstract

This article attempts to understand how different print cultures that service different language communities fuel nationalisms that are not co-terminus with a nation-state. In the tradition of scholars like Benedict Anderson, it examines the connections between nationalism and print culture, but with reference to a single important event: violence at the Marikana mine. These events constituted the largest act of lethal force against civilians in the post-apartheid era. The South African press in all three languages - Afrikaans, isiZulu, and English – covered the violence that erupted at the Lonmin mine in Marikana in mid-August 2012. Using original translations of daily newspapers and quantitative content analysis, the article assesses the differences among the various language media outlets covering the event. It finds that news coverage varied significantly according to the language medium in three ways: attribution of action, portrayal of sympathy and blame, and inclusion of political and economic coverage in the aftermath of the violence. These variations in coverage coincided with differences between reading publics divided by race, class, and location. The article argues that the English-language bias of most media analysis misses key points of contestation that occur in different media, both within South Africa, and throughout the post-colonial world.