Afro-Optimism/Afro-Pessimism and the South African Media (Report‪)‬

Abstract After its first democratic elections in 1994, South Africa was often seen as an example of a peaceful democratic transition on the African continent, in which democratic institutions like the media were firmly established and safeguarded by a new constitution. Over the course of the first decade and a half, this optimistic view of South Africa has made way for a counterdiscourse of Afro-pessimism, in which clashes around the role of the media--in particular the public broadaster--were interpreted as signs that some of the democratic gains in South Africa were being reversed. The often fractious relationship between government and the media in post-apartheid South Africa was then also taken as a reflection on the viability of democratic media on the continent. This article aims to show how the media--in particular the public broadcaster--became a site for the contestation between Afro-optimistic and Afropessimistic discourses.