The tale of two publics: Media, political representation and citizenship in Hout Bay,

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Date

2017

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

HSRC Press

Abstract

This chapter makes the case that access to the spaces of public debate in post-apartheid South Africa is about the challenge of political representation as much as it is about the challenge of access to communication technologies. These representational issues centre on the racialised and partisan nature of state-society relations framed, in part, through identity discourses and, for many poor citizens, patronage politics linked to local governance. In the urban setting this often also takes a spatial form linked to the neighbourhood or community, and involves local leaders who invoke the exclusive right to mediate for poor and marginalised groups in the name of liberation nationalism and service delivery – elsewhere termed the politics of the ‘party-society’.

Description

Keywords

Hout Bay, Post-apartheid, Racialism, Political representation, Citizenship

Citation

Piper, L. et al. (2017). The tale of two publics: Media, political representation and citizenship in Hout Bay. eds: Garman .A., Wasserman. H. HSRC Press: Cape Town