Symbolizing Violence: State and Media Discourse in TV Coverage of Township Protest, 1985–7

Abstract

South Africa’s history is spattered with violent confrontations between the army or police and black demonstrators protesting against state repression — the Sharpeville massacres of 1960 and Soweto riots of 1976 among the more recent. However, from the early 1980s, mass resistance against apartheid erupted with unprecedented tenacity and ferocity. School boycotts, rent boycotts, and mass demonstrations proliferated country-wide. The state responded forcibly, dispatching army units to townships where police efforts to quell the uprisings were inadequate. As the turmoil continued to escalate through 1985 and into 1986, a national state of emergency was declared — the second in the country’s history.

A shorter version of this chapter was published in War and Society, ed. Cocks and Nathan (David Philip, 1989).