Media Education

Investigating media training in a period of political and economic change

A paper presented at a Seminar on Education and Training in Journalism and Communication in Mozambique

Prepared by the UNESCO/UNDP Media Development Project, Maputo, November 2001

by Ruth Teer-Tomaselli

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Journalism education for transformation

by KG Tomaselli

Paper presented at the Seminar on Journalism Education and Communication in Mozambique

Prepared by the UNESCO/UNDP Media Development Project, Maputo, November 2001

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Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1985
Type of Product: An article. Published in Media Information Australia. Feb/March 1985, 9-20.
Copyright: Media Information Australia

‘…learning by doing’ is often the best way of learning anything. But there are limits to what one can learn… A simple image on the screen is not good enough. The means and methods by which this arrives there are all­ -important… and sadly, few South Africans are really aware of them.’

Lionel Friedberg SAFTTA News, 1977

South African political life is rent with fierce struggles at virtually every level of the state. These reached it crescendo during the 1976 Soweto disturbances which heralded the beginning of an extended period of unrest. This year also saw the introduction of broadcast television. Not surprisingly, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) is used by the government as a propaganda vehicle for a justification of its apartheid policies. To understand the significance of the structure and content of media courses offered at South African universities, it is first necessary therefore, to briefly examine the political, economic and social context within which they have developed since the mid-1970s.

THE STATE, EDUCATION AND THE MEDIA

South Africa has been facing a crisis in capitalism since the early 1970s, and a crisis in hegemony which became particularly evident after the 1976 Soweto disturbances (Saul and Gelb, 1981). All levels of the social formation are facing stresses and strains. On the political front, the crisis is apparent in the split in the ruling National Party and the phenomenal growth of the non-racial United Democratic Front. Ideologically, it is manifested in excessive control of the media and state sponsored commissions into the media and educational reform. The most visible problem, however, is South Africa’s deteriorating economic position seen in the chronic recessionary conditions, compounded by a high rate of inflation and deteriorating labour relations. The interaction of all three levels coalesced into a low level civil war which became overtly apparent with the deployment of troops in the black residential areas in late 1984.

In an attempt to contain political and economic instability since the late 1970s, the state, as the guardian of the welfare of capital in general, set out to forge a coalition between the dominant white classes constituting the hegemonic bloc, and a number of intermediate classes constituting the white, and black middle classes (Moss, 1980).

South Africa’s entry into the epoch of monopoly capitalism has witnessed a burgeoning of the non-productive positions in industry -­especially those in the administrative, clerical, distributive and communication sectors. Simultaneously, the shifting emphasis from mining and agriculture to manufacturing has brought about a change in capital’s requirements for labour. The primary sectors still need a large workforce whose reproduction of labour power is kept low through the enforced migrancy of black workers. The reproductive costs of the family are partially met by the subsistence agriculture in the rural ‘homeland’ areas from which it is difficult for the women and elderly to escape (Lacey, 198 1). The shortage of skilled labourpower inhibits the growth of manufacturing (Webster, 1983), and the state has consequently been forced to encourage the creation of a black middle class. Such a class would necessarily be urban-based, and a greater interaction between the races now occurs in commerce and industry than previously.

ENGINEERING CONSENT THROUGH MEDIA EDUCATION

‘All levels of the social formation are facing stresses and strains…’

Two strands ol communicative need resulted from the class restructuring process.Thefirst was the need to persuade whites toaccept the (albeit limited) multiracial social relations which follow ashift in the relations of production. The second was the need to prepare propagandists- both black and white- who would be deployed by capital and the state to legitimise the process of political ‘reform’ initiated by the P W Botha government in 1979.

Capital was one pressure for reform, another was the need to resolve the deepening hegemonic crisis which threatened tile state following the nationwide unrest sparked by Soweto in 1976. It the new black middle class was to be successfully co-opted into an alliance with capital, but on unequal terms with whites, it would have to be persuaded of the rationality of their new class position. The study of ‘inter-group’ or ‘inter­cultural’ relations communication was consequently promoted by state research funding bodies (cf Marais and Drever, 1982) after a survey that was conducted during 1980 which suggested that the field of inter-group relations was the most important area of research in South Africa (Research Bulletin. 198 1: 1-3). This response reflects the state’s reading of black protest in South Africa where resistance is seen to occur because the ‘benefits’ of apartheid have not been communicated clearly enough to them. This functionalist one-way view of communication was most clearly articulated by van Schoor ( 1982: 113): “Any method of communication which is aimed at achieving results compels the recipient to agree with the communicator and act in accordance with his intentions” (emphasis added). Given the ‘failure’ of this position, conservative academics have become more subtle in their discourse; in “South Africa, with its variety of cultural groups, serious attention should be given … to the compilation of findings which would create a better understanding and appreciation of the values, needs and aspirations of each group by all other groups” (Communicare, 1982:2). Or, as van Schoor ( 1982: 70) puts it: “The pursuit of mutual understanding”.

What is essentially a politico-economic issue is thus reconceptualised as a problem of cultural differences in the reception of messages. This shift reflects the excessive compartmentalisation which fragments the South African state into the cultural, political and economic, each of which is seen to be autonomous. The connection between apartheid (politics) and economics is thus obscured by a racial ideology. The issue is seen as one of conflict management between the various ‘population groups’ (a euphemism for ‘races’).

The state, together with many universities and academics is currently developing a battery of ‘inter-cultural’ methodologies aimed at identifying cultural communication lapses, and suggesting the means of rectifying these with specific media programmes. Some work on cinema, for example, assumes a neutral state mediating the interests between the various “population groups” in a fair and impartial manner (cf Fourie, 1981). The collapsing of the notions of inter-cultural inter-group relations/communication into an agglomerative concept is geared, therefore, towards averting a crisis between the hegemonic bloc and the dominated classes (Tomaselli, 1983: 263-271).

The engineering of consent is thus to be facilitated through the ‘scholarly’ analysis of communications problems bedevilling interaction between the races. From the following discussion, however, it will become clear that the assumptions which underlie the majority of work done by communication researchers in South Africa, fit well into the ‘intercultural’ paradigm which is designed to benefit a more subtly administered white hegemony in the future.

THEORY: THE DICTATOR OF POLITICAL JUSTIFICATIONS

Most universities- Afrikaans and English-language, and ‘tribal’ teach communication studies. The paradigms employed are often contingent upon the ideological position of the university concerned.

Afrikaans-Language Technikons and Universities: Orthodoxy

The Pretoria Technical College introduced a film course in 1964. Its enrolment was limited to twenty white students a year. Although now offering one, two and three year diplomas with a larger number of students, its training emphasis remains on the technical. Now known as the Technikon, its graduates are taught to reproduce the existing relations of production which has the effect of perpetuating the dominant apartheid-based world view. The course is structured into the discrete professional work areas of camera, sound, editing, history and theory, without explaining the semiotic or ideological implications of one area for another (cf Van der Merwe and Theunissen, 1980).

Five of the six Afrikaans universities concentrate on the philosophical and propaganda elements of communication, drawing on J. M Peters’ ( 1977) semiotics, and American positivism. The theoretical courses tend to decontextualise the study of media from their social and political origins, or simply take them for granted. A number work from an existential philosophical position (e.g, Kierkegaard as employed by van Schoor, 1979; 1982) while others follow a theologically-based form of determinist hermeneutics.

The purer forms of semiotics and film theory are generally offered up to honours level. Of the third year of the Department of Communication of the University of South Africa (UNISA), Fourie and du Plooy (1980:23) write:

The material covered are the main film theories such as the theories of Eisenstein, Bazin, Metz etc. The prescribed book is J Dudley Andrew’s The Major Film Theories. The relationship between art as a craft and as representation of reality is stressed, as well as art as a language; visual literacy; the media of pictorial communication: the medium (pictorial code) as a means of transmission and as an institution; the medium as text, the structure of the pictorial message; the medium as sign system; semiology etc. Special attention is also paid to the theories of art philosophers, Gombridge and Wolheim.

The received wisdom of mass media curricula offered in America and the work of conservative Dutch and Belgian scholars is adopted and often transplanted in a structural-functionalist manner to the South African context. This conventional reading is used to locate South Africa as a ‘special case’, that is, it is ‘different’ because of its racial heterogeneity.

Working from this assumption, most Afrikaans academics tend to imitate the production conventions and administrative structures devised by the SABC and thereby reproduce and insist on the ‘reality’ constructed through the conventional use of the medium.¹ Media reality that reproduced by the state and Afrikaans-language media) is thus seen to be congruent with external reality, and the choice of a positivist paradigm (to which even Peters’ formalist semiotics is often made to conform) inevitably reinforces this assumption. Where divergences are identified, they are attributed to imperfect media models which misrepresent the relationship between the cinema of particular cultural groups and reality (Fourie, 1982). The emphasis on ‘professionalism’ further demand an imitative practice rather than innovation. Questions of ownership and control, ideology and productive forces are seen as ‘not cinema’ (or ‘not television’) and the hidden influences informing the accepted ‘reality’ are mostly ignored. Only UNISA deals with the South African film industry in detail, though its course references do not include the internationally acknowledged critical work which has emerged on English-language campuses since 1979.

The practical communication courses are oriented towards skills acquisition, professionalism and, like the Technikon, aim to prepare immediately employable graduates. The courses tend to duplicate current practice within the media industry, notably the government­ supporting Afrikaans press (cf de Beer, 1982)2, the state controlled radio and television service (cf Fourie and du Ploov, 1980), advertising and public relations, and methods of persuasion (ct Finn et al, 1983). Emphasis is on technique, and academic personnel are largely drawn from the commercial media institutions. The racial capitalist ideology learned in the newsroom, the state broadcasting service, advertising and so on, is thereby perpetuated in educational discourse. There is also a reverse flow of such academics into the industry. Little analysis seems to be done, the ‘what ‘and the ‘why’ being less important than the ‘how to’.

English- Language Universities: Reformism and Radicalism

Only two of the five English-language universities, which derive their traditions from Britain, offer production courses in film and television. These are the Rhodes University Department of Journalism and Media Studies, established in 1969, and the School of Dramatic Art. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, which pioneered the teaching of’ film and television theory and practice in 1976. The Contemporary Cultural Studies Unit, established in 1985, extended a culturalist theory of media production to the University of Natal campus.

Most of the English-language universities offer ‘professional communications’ options. These are service courses geared to teaching engineers and commerce students how to write reports, and to cope with business and other industrial communication situations. There is a strong emphasis on linguistics and inter-personal communication. Significantly, this kind of course is not uniformly available on Afrikaans campuses. The differing emphases – Afrikaans universities on mass media and English universities on service courses – is indicative of two social processes at work.

The first is that the growth of the Afrikaans language as the last to develop in the world was greatly due to its popularisation, initially via the press, poetry and literature, and later through radio, film and now television.3 It is doubtful whether the Afrikaans language could have developed as it has without the impetus of the mass media. The English language, being several centuries older, has no such allegiance. In accordance with the class restructuring process, communication courses offered at the ‘tribal’ colleges are mainly commercially-oriented.

‘History teaches that a national film industry will only progress …if technical knowledge is paralleled with theoretical and critical innovation.’

The second point relates to the orientation of neo-colonial culture and forms of mediated protest against Afrikaans localisation and cultural instance. The English-language universities still tend to look to Europe, particularly England for their cultural cue. More important, however, is the disadvantage faced by school children of English-language institutions which have been infiltrated by Afrikaans-speaking teachers because of the preference by English speakers for business and commerce. The service courses have become necessary because of the resulting inability of English-speaking students to communicate adequately at university level in their home language. These courses are also designed to assist black students overcome their disadvantaged school education, made all the more difficult through the state’s insistence up to 1977 that their medium of instruction be in African vernaculars up to Standard 3. (Afrikaans universities remain largely closed to black students, particularly at undergraduate levels.)

The Witwatersrand School of Dramatic Art offers photography, film and television courses. Its film theory options follow a reformist pattern, relying on a formalist Metzian semiology, infused with the ideas of George Gerbner and the Annenberg school. The latter provide a more sophisticated backdrop to the application of American methods in South Africa, though his theories are largely distilled of their neo-Marxist content (Gerbner is also read at the Afrikaans universities). Performance studies are the unifying factor which facilitate an analysis of the media ranging from ethnography on the one hand, through the major film theories, to the study of narrative on the other (Tomaselli, 1980). Its film and television courses are creatively oriented through narrative, though with some unsuccessful Marxist-based excursions into documentary (Anderson, 1983).4 The School is decidedly liberal in comparison with Afrikaans universities and aims to infuse the students with a critical view of the media (cf van Zyl, 1984).

At Rhodes, other than the print media courses, positivism and formalism are subordinate to a semiotically-based (Peircian) Marxist analysis which assumes some knowledge of materialist development studies and the ideology of technology. The emphasis is on documentary, direct-­cinema/video and structurally oriented ethnographic and oppositional applications rather than narrative.

Like all the above mentioned courses, students are equipped with a knowledge and skills to cope within conventional industrial practice, but they are also taught how and when to exploit the gaps in the media institution in the interests of a more democratic reportage (Tomaselli, 1982). The course leader tries to ensure that the television production groups are composed of students who hold differing ideologies.5 Thus, instead of being able to work in small groups with like-minded colleagues, the groups are forced to argue out the details of interpretation and intention by first examining their own individual assumptions. Similarly, role playing of various technical positions is used, not only to give an overall competence, but also to equip students with an understanding of how semiotic structures are subordinate to organisational arrangements (Hayman, 1980; Tomaselli and Hayman, 1984).

The Department also offers documentary video and narrative film theory and production courses in the Rhodes Drama Department at honours level. The film course works through orthodox theoretical approaches to formalist and Marxist based semiology (the course text is Heath, 1981). The course applies the theory to an analysis of specific films, as well as in the production of a short narrative.5

EXTRA CURRICULA COURSES

Media theory and film criticism are also taught by other departments such as English (cf Davids, 1980), fine arts and through extra-mural teaching centres attached to the English-language campuses. The South African Film and Television Technicians Association (SAFTTA) has also run a number of courses since 1976 (cf Cockburn, 1980). In 1983, a Centre for Direct Cinema was established under the auspices of the University of Witwatersrand with the help of the French government and Jean Rouch, with additional funding for film stock corning from the American International Communications Agency. The motivation behind the scheme is that black South Africans will be given the opportunity to learn film making skills and theory. The Centre emphasis the artistic nature of film making in comparison to the collective nature of most oppositional film making practice.

CRITICAL DEBATE

Up until 1979, critical discussion of South African cinema was limited to the occasional article in New Nation -a journal of liberal, pragmatic and theoretical opinion- and a couple of articles in the UNISA journal, Communicatio. Only one book had been written on the early industry (Gutsche, 1972). Unlike the French experience where journals like Cahiers du Cinema and Positief were not only at the forefront of a theoretical-production interaction, but challenged each other’s ideas, it was only with the first edition of my own book, The South African Film Industry in 1979, together with the inauguration of’ Critical Arts and, more particularly, The SAFTTA Journal after 1982, that any kind of continuing debate began to occur. The former publication studies society-media relations, while the latter aimed at film technicians and progressive students works from an implicit theoretical perspective. Through the way the journal is designed it has been able to catalyse some debate between theorists, commercial practitioners, and progressives working within the industry or on the fringes of it (cf 1984 issue).

THEORY AND PRACTICE

Despite limited, but vibrant educational activities, both between and outside universities, little time is devoted to the link between theory and practice in a neo-colonial context. The choice of film studied, assumes that the only viable subjects are ‘art’ films, and so whole areas of theory and history are ignored, particularly the structural analysis of South African cinema. The emphasis on ‘art’ in the absence of productive forces and relations of production has had the effect of entrenching a European and American critical view, rather than stimulating a relevant, locally -informed critical discussion. As John van Zyl (1984, 53) of the Witwatersrand School of Dramatic Art comments:

One cannot separate film and television from other symbolic communication.

The attitude that art is an entity, non-art is an entity, politics is an entity (not to mention sport!) and practical/technical proficiency is an entity lies at the heart of totalitarianism. It is simplistic, it is static and it leads to silence.

One of the consequences of the division of theory from practice is that few technicians or even directors have an adequate knowledge of how feature films work thematically, theoretically, or even how basic genres work. History teaches that a national film industry will only progress thematically and creatively if technical knowledge is parallelled with theoretical and critical innovation. The former is unlikely to progress without the latter. A sense of cinematic history too, is a requisite component, as is a knowledge of’ national history and the processes which have shaped the Society is, it is today.

Inevitably, the more progressive South African film/video maker theorists still have much to learn from their counterparts in South America and Africa itself’. Operating under the most repressive circumstances, these Third World film makers have nonetheless forged distinct schools of’ film making and developed theories, practices and styles which are aimed at rediscovering their cultural heritage and re­-establishing democracy. Yet, most South African academics continue to look to the ‘art’ cinema of Europe and America for their cue. Similarly, progressive film makers argue that the ‘uniqueness’ of the South African situation makes the film theories of other neo-colonial countries redundant. The irony is that some of the preferred ‘First World’ cinema is itself subversive, though it is not interpreted as such. Even Marxist movies such as Bertolucci’s My Tragic Father, screened at the Cape Town and Durban film festivals during 1982, are politically divorced from their contexts by the local and imported newspaper critics flown in from Johannesburg and London to lead discussion. Yet if these same (mostly white) audiences were to he told of the political implications of these films, they would perhaps refuse to understand their Marxist themes. The Cape Town Festival is organised by the Film Education Unit of the University of’ Cape Town. Though aimed at extra-mural education, it rarely involves itself with grassroots education in the wider community. The Durban Festival uses the Natal University campus as a venue, but does attempt to move films to the black communities.

Just as South African audiences have been conditioned by decades of Hollywood movies, so have many of our film practitioners and teachers. Repeating reductionist bourgeois common sense, they constantly locate South Africa in a dichotomous First/Third World situation, claiming that whites belong to the First and blacks to the Third. They refuse, or cannot see the structural links between the two ‘worlds’, or more specifically between poverty and wealth. That Third World film makers do see these connections is best exemplified in Gary Crowdus’ (1984) interview with Mahama Johnson Traore, a Senegalese film maker:

During (my period at college) I knew some very difficult times, either in a well- to-do milieu and also in a very poor milieu and if you have to determine which milieu marked me most, it was certainly the poorest. At that time there was also the experience of colonialism, the racial problem etc. o I became conscious of who I was and in what sort of society I was living.

Traore might well have been talking about South Africa, and much else of what he says about Senegal is analogous. Where Tomaselli and Hayman (1984) discuss production as cultural practice and have set in motion educational processes to stimulate a socially concerned, theoretically-informed film and television production at Rhodes University, Traore and other Third World film makers have already, for some time, been engaged in such production. The points raised by the Rhodes lecturers about involving the subject community in the production of the film/video are reinforced by Traore’s comments on the need for continued discussion and interaction with popular audiences.

The politically -engaged cinema that Traore speaks of remains skeptical of the more pragmatic approach outlined by van Zyl. While van Zyl is conscious of the problems outlined by Traore, and laments the dearth of Third World films in South Africa, he is also aware of the institutional constraints operating to restrict the extension of film and video studies into socio-political contexts. He points to the inevitable conflicts which occur when film and television are tucked into existing departments of drama, communication and English.

Like many others, van Zyl points to the kick of alternative distributing channels for non-commercial productions. He argues that Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) facilities run by business for training purposes is the fastest growing communication industry at present in South Africa. While van Zyl dissociates himself from the apartheid regime, he suggests that his graduates could he gainfully employed by companies encouraging reform through their in-house CCTV training. This approach, however, assumes that what political ‘reform’ South Africa has been undergoing since 1979, will have democratising effects for blacks. This is the classical liberal position, and arguably has the effect of being largely supportive of the state’s maneuverings to bring about a more stable class system.

Since most South African universities take their cue from conservative American production traditions, it is not surprising that many local departments emphasise the level of technology, and technique in the absence of studying the economic, social and political forces which shape conventions, semiotic choices and combinations, and what is taken for granted (Tomaselli and Hayman, 1981). Rarely is the link made between how the practice of production is governed by capital intensive bureaucracies or the ideological assumptions ingrained into producers, directors and technicians through the capitalist relations of production. This lack of critical concern for analysis of context is partly due to the emphasis on vocational training or ‘marketable skills’ by the majority of film and television lecturers: ‘Can our graduates get jobs in the industry’ is an over-riding concern. This attitude feeds into all areas of capitalist practice and leads to departments applying the principles of formula and efficiency in the evaluation of student work. Consequently, a blind role specialisation becomes important and students accept the formulaic procedures and techniques imposed on them by the department so that the productions can be made in terms of what will work in the market place (Anderson, 1982).

Alternatively, those lecturers who insist on an ‘artistic’ approach, while perhaps hostile to the conventions of commercial genres, similarly look for their models elsewhere: the ‘best’ of European and American directors. Or as van Zyl (1984 ) puts it:

One would be foolish indeed not to recognise that subjects . . . are being taught in a neo-colonialist context in South Africa… film dare not indulge itself with purely aesthetic studies of the film of Fellini! There are also the films of Ousmane Sembene of Senegal.

Such a re-emphasis remains elitist for it continues to be concerned with the ‘great men’ of cinema, with little attention being given to the social, economic and political processes which have shaped the very products of these individuals. Few courses go beyond a textual analysis, asking why certain styles, techniques or genres are used. In other words, text is foregrounded over context.

CONCLUSION

Paradoxically, although the administrative structure of ‘South African departments has not separated out product from theory/ history/ criticism as in many American and French institutions, the benefits of this marriage are rarely seen. Very often, students are not even able to develop a praxis which conjoins style with subject. This lack of progress is mainly due to the contradictions which bedevil media departments which lack a theoretical-practical symbiosis. The practical production courses often imitate industry procedure: the ‘way things will be done’. The history, and theory courses, however, often taught by the same lecturers, simultaneously introduce the students to historical and theoretical alternatives without providing them with the skills or opportunity to implement these alternatives. Students thus find themselves between theoretical application and historical instance on the one hand, and conventional reproductive practice on the other. This might he summed up in the maxim: ‘practice without theory is a repetition of bad habits’.

‘Learning by doing’ -whether manipulating a video game or producing a movie – takes for granted the assumptions of the manufacturers as to how their equipment will be used in industrial practice and consumption. As Friedberg points out, “a simple image on the screen is not good enough”, we need to pierce the opacity of that image. Whether we call that image ‘art’ or ‘craft’, whether we think that it represents ‘reality’ or a ‘window to reality’, this paper has argued that the derivation of the “simple image” is a very complex process which extends far beyond the disciplines of film and television. It originates from the bowels of the institutions which own and control the media, and its profit-generating applications are reinforced and legitimised by universities which are part of the ideological apparatuses of the state.

We have set out to question this orientation, to argue the case for the teaching of media in the interests of democracy rather than the entrenchment of the asymmetrical distribution of wealth, particularly, in South Africa.

NOTES

1. Some Afrikaans academics, notably, Pieter Fourie, are increasingly criticizing the SABC for overtly preventing the free How of information. This criticism has stimulated attacks made by the Director-general of’ the Corporation on its critics and dissident political groupings like the United Democratic Front.

2. An exception at UNISA is Eric Louw (1983: 1984) whose Poulantzian analyses of the press exclude him from this category.

3. Afrikaans was recognised as the second official language in 1925. Unlike most languages which grow organically, new words to account for technological progress are manufactured by a language service bureau. These are then popularised through the Afrikaans-language media, and schools.

4. Anderson discusses the conflicts which occur in teaching practice where the School foregrounded the ‘products’ of students over the teaching or learning process.

5. Unlike Afrikaans universities this is possible at the English-language institutions because of their acceptance of black students. Rhodes being the only department offering journalism as a discipline, has an unusually high percentage of black students in comparison to other departments. The positions adopted by student range from Marxist (black and white), Black Consciousness, through liberal to apartheid-supporting nationalists. Up to the end of 1983, the state restricted the number of black students entering English-language universities. These restrictions were partially lifted in 1984.

REFERENCES

Anderson P, ‘The Tiakani Project: The Maker and the Problem of Method in Documentary Video Production’.Honours Thesis, University of Witwatersrand 1983.

Cockburn, P. ‘Seminar: Further into Film and Television’, The SAFTAA Journal, 1, 1:25-27, 1980

Communicare,

‘Editorial’, Communicare., 3. 1: 2, 1982.

Crowdus G, ‘Cinema in Africa Must be a School’, in Tomaselli, K.G. and Hayman, G. eds., Perspectives in the Teaching of Film and Television Production. Grahamstown: Rhodes Universitv: 44-47, 1984. Originally published in Cineaste.

Davids A, ‘Film as Art at UCT (Cape Town University)’ The SAFTAA Journal, 1, 1:24-27, 1980.

De Beer A. S. Joernalistiek Vandag, Cape Town: Tafelberg, 1982.

Finn, S. M., Weich, H. M. and Renshurg, R.S, Professional Persuasion, Cape Town: Butterworths. 1983.

Fourie, P, ‘How can the South African Film Industry be Rescued from its Flight?’

Rapport,

(21 June) 1981.

Fourie, P. and du Plooy G, ‘Film and Television Training at the Dept of Communications at UNISA’, ‘The SAFTTA Journal, 1, 2: 20-23, 1980

Fourie, P. ‘Interkulturele Probleme in Beeldkommunikasie’, Communicare, 3, 1:60-71. 1982.

Gutsche, T, The History and Social Significance of Motion Pictures in South
Africa 1895-1940,

Cape Town: Howard Timmins, 1972.

Hayman, G, ‘Television in Journalism Problems, Aims and Solutions’. The SAFITA
Journal

, 1, 2: 15-19, 1980.

Heath, S, Questions of Cinema. London: MacMillan, 1981.

Lacey, M. Waiting for the Boroko, Johannesburg: Ravan, 1981.

Louw, P.E, ‘The English and Afrikaans Presses in South Africa: One Press or Two”

Communicatio,

9, 2: 14-17, 1983.

Louw, P. E, ‘The Libertarian Theory of the Press: How Appropriate in the South African Context?”, Communicatio, 10, 1: -11-37, 1984.

Marais, H. C., and Dreyer L, `HSRC Investigation into Inter-Group Relations: the programme and its financing’, Communicare, 3: 3-7, 1982.

Moss, G. ‘Total Strategy’, Work in Progress, 11: 1-11, 1980.

Peters, J. M, Pictorial Communication, Cape Town: David Phillip. Translated from the original Nederlands published in 1974 as Principes van die Beeldcommunicate, 1977, Research Bulletin, 11, 2: 1-3, 198 1.

Saul, J .S and Gelb, S. The Crisis in South Africa: Class Defence, Class
Revolution

, New York: Monthly Review Press. 1981.

Tomaselli, K. G. The South African Film Industry, Johannesburg: African Studies Institute, University of Witwatersrand. 1979.

Tomaselli, K. G. ‘The Teaching of film and Television Production: A Statement of Philosophy and Objectives’. Perspectives in Education, 4. 2: 65-74.

Tomaselli, K. G, ‘The Teaching of Film and Television Production in a Third World Context: The Case of South Africa’, Journal of the University Film and Video Association, 34, 4: 1-13.

Tomaselli, K .G. ‘Ideology and Cultural Production in South African Cinema’. PhD Thesis, University of Witwatersrand: 263-271, 1983.

Tomaselli, K. G. and Hayman, G. ‘Conference Report: First National Student Film and Video Festival’. Critical Arts, 2, 1: 80-93, 1981.

Tomaselli, K . G. and Hayman, G.’From Orality’, In Tomaselli, K. G, and Hayman, G. eds., Perspectives on the Teaching of Film and Television Production, Grahamstown: Rhodes University: 1-23, 1984.

Van Schoor, M.The Idea of Communication, Bloemfontein: PJ de Villiers Publishers, 1979.

Van Schoor, M. What is Communication? Pretoria: .J L van Shaik , 1982.

Van de Merwe, F and Theunissen C. H., ‘Film Produksie by die universiteit van Pretoria’, The SAFTTA Journal, 2, 2: 1-5, 1984.

Van Zyl, A . F, ‘Beyond Film and Television Studies”. Which Jobs for Whom’.” In Tomaselli and Hayman, op cit: 52-55, 1984.

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Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1983
Place: Rhodes University
Product: Etat De La Theorie (I)
Copyright: Nouvelles Methoes/Nouveaux
 
 

’learning
by doing’ is often the best way of learning anything. But there are
limits to what one can learn… A simple image on the screen is not good
enough. This means and methods by which this arrives there are
all-important… and sadly, few South Africans are REALLY aware of
them.

Lionel Friedbert, The SAFTTA Newsletter, 1977.

Although
the South African film production industry dates back to 1910, the
study of the film at local universities only commenced after 1976. This
lag is all the more serious when it is realised that South Africa
boasted the longest running newsreel, Africa Mirror
(1913-1969), and had produced a number of epic films between 1916 and
1922 which rivaled the American industry in terms of production values,
dramatic structure, photography, as well as direction (see, e.g. De Voortrekkers /Winning a Continent (1916), which easily outshines Hollywood’s The Covered Wagon, which it inspired).

The
Pretoria Technical College introduced a film course in 1964. Its
enrollment was limited to twenty white students a year. Although now
offering one, two and three year diplomas with a larger number of
students, its training emphasis remains on the technical. Now known as
the Technikon, its graduates are taught merely to reproduce the existing
relations of production which has the effect of perpetuating the
dominant apartheid -based world view. The course is structured into the
discrete professional work areas of camera, sound, editing, history and
theory, without explaining the semiotic or ideological implications of
one area on another / 1.

It
took the late introduction of broadcast television in 1976 to provide
the stimulus for the inauguration of film and television courses to
South African universities. The separate paths that these courses took
is examined elsewhere/2. This paper will examine the background to the
teaching of media theory and production, specifically film and
television. It will then identify the links between theory and practice
in terms of the ideological/class positions represented by the
institutions and the academics within them.

To
understand the significance of the structure and content of media
courses offered at South African universities, it is first necessary to
examine the political, economic and social context within which they
have developed since the mid 1970s.

The state, education and the media.

South
Africa has been facing a crisis in capitalism since the early 1970s/3,
and a crisis in hegemony which became particularly evident after the
1976 Soweto disturbances. All levels of the social formation are facing
stresses and strains political (the split in the ruling National Party
and the phenomenal growth of the multi-racial United Democratic Front),
the ideological (manifested in excessive control of the media, and state
sponsored commissions into reforming education) and not least, the
economic (the chronic recessionary conditions compounded by a high rate
of inflation, and deteriorating labour relations).

In
response, the state, as the guardian of the welfare of capital in
general, has attempted to establish a coalition between the dominant
classes constituting the hegemonic bloc, and a number of intermediate
classes constituting the white, and black middle classes/4.

South
Africa’s entry into the epoch of monopoly capitalism has witnessed a
burgeoning of the non-productive positions in industry -especially those
in the administrative, clerical, distributive and communication
sectors. Simultaneously, the shifting emphasis from mining and
agriculture to manufacturing has brought about a change in capital’s
requirements for labour. The primary sectors still need a large
workforce whose reproduction of labour power is kept low through
enforced migrancy/ 5. The shortage of white skilled manpower inhibits
the growth of manufacturing, and the state has consequently been forced
to encourage the creation of a lack middle class. Such a class would
necessarily be urban-based, and a greater interaction between the races
would occur in commerce and industry.

Engineering consent through media education

Two
strands of communicative needs resulted from the class restructuring
process. The first was the need to persuade whites to accept the (albeit
limited) multiracial social relations which follows a shift in the
relations of production. The second was the need to prepare
propagandists -both white and black -who would be deployed by capital
and the state to legitimize the process of political ‘reform’ initiated
by the PW Botha government in 1979.

Capital
was one pressure for the reform; another was the need to resolve the
deepening hegemonic crisis which threatened the state following the
nationwide unrest sparked by Soweto in 1976. If the new black middle
class was to be successfully co-opted into an alliance with capital, but
on unequal terms with whites, it would have to be persuaded of the
rationality of their new class position. The study of ‘inter-group’ or
‘inter-cultural’ relations-/communication was consequently promoted by
state research funding bodies/6. This response reflects the state’s
reading of black protest in South Africa where resistance is seen to
occur because the ‘benefits’ or apartheid have not been communicated
clearly enough to them. What is essentially a politico-economic issue is
thus reconceptualised as a problem or cultural differences. This shift
reflects the excessive compartmentalization which fragments the South
African state into the cultural, political and economic, each of which
is seen to be autonomous. The connection between apartheid (politics)
and economics is thus obscured by a racial ideology. The state, together
with many universities and academics is currently developing a battery
of ‘inter-cultural’ methodologies aimed at identifying cultural
communication lapses, and suggesting means of rectifying these with
specific media programmes. Work on cinema; for example, assume a neutral
state mediating the interests between the various population
groups (races) in a fair and impartial manner/7. The notion of
inter-cultural /inter-group relations/communication is geared therefore
to averting a crisis between the hegemonic bloc and the dominated
classes/ 8.

The engineering
of consent is thus to be facilitated through the ‘scholarly’ analysis of
communications problems bedeviling interaction between the races. From
the following discussion, however, it will become clear that the
assumptions which underlie the majority of the work done by
communications researchers in South Africa, fits well into the
‘inter-cultural’ paradigm which is designed to benefit a more subtly
administered white hegemony in the future.

The
next section will look more closely at the ideological justification of
theory in the maintenance of racial capitalism within the content of
media courses offered in South Africa.

Theory: The dictator of political justifications.

Most
universities-Afrikaans and English- Language, and ‘tribal ‘ – teach
communication studies in one form or another. The paradigms employed are
often contingent upon the ideological position of the university
concerned.

Afrikaans -Language Universities: Orthodoxy.

Five
of the six Afrikaans universities concentrate on the philosophical and
propaganda elements of communication, drawing on JM Peters’ / 9
semiotics, and American positivism. The theoretical courses
decontextualise the study of the media from their social and political
origins, and often follow a theologically based form of determinist
hermeneutics.

The
purer forms of semiotics are not ignored and film theory courses are
generally offered up to honors level. Of the third year of the
Department of Communication of the University of South Africa (UNISDA),
Fourie and du Plooy write: The
material covered are the main film theories such as the theories
Eisenstein, Bazin, Metz etc. The Major Film Theories. The relationship
between art as a craft and as representation of reality is stressed, as
well as art as a language; visual literacy; the medium (pictorial code)
as a means of transmission and as an institution; the medium as text;
the structure of the pictorial message; the medium as sign system;
semiology etc. Special attention is also paid to the theories of art
philosophies, Gombridge and Wolheim/ 10.

The
received wisdom of curricula offered in America is uncritically adopted
and often transplanted in a functionalist manner to the South African
context. This conventional reading is often used to locate South Africa
as A ‘special case’, that is, it is ‘different’, because of its racial
heterogeneity. Working from this assumption, Afrikaans academics tend to
imitate the structures devised by the SABC and thereby reproduce and
insist on the ‘reality’ constructed through the conventional use of the
medium. Media reality is thus seen to be congruent with external
reality, and the choice of positivist paradigm inevitably reinforces
this assumption. The emphasis on ‘professionalism’ further demands an
imitative practice rather than innovation. Questions of ownership and
control, ideology and productive forces are seen as ‘not cinema’ and the
hidden influences informing the accepted ‘reality’ are ignored. Only
UNISA deals with South African cinema in details, though its course
references seem to ignore the internationally acknowledged critical work
which has emerged on English-language campuses since 1979/11.

The
practical communication courses found in Afrikaans universities are
oriented towards skills, professionalism and, like the Technikon, aim to
prepare an uncritical student for immediate employment. The courses
tend to duplicate current practice within the media industry, notably
the government-supporting Afrikaans press/12, the state controlled radio
and television service/ 13, advertising and public relations, and
methods of persuasion/ 14. Emphasis is on technique, and academic
personnel are largely drawn from the commercial media institutions.

The
racial capitalist ideology learned in the newsroom, the state
broadcasting service, advertising and so on, is thereby perpetuated in
educational discourse. Little analysis seems to be done, the ‘what’ and
the ‘why’ being less important than the ‘how to’.

English- Language Universities: Reformism and Radicalism.

Only
two of the five English-Language universities, which derive their
traditions from Britain, offer courses in the mass media. These are the
Rhodes University Department of Journalism and Media Studies,
established in 1969, and the School of Dramatic Art, University of
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, which pioneered the teaching of film and
television theory and practice in 1976. However, nearly all the offer
‘professional communications’ options. These are service courses geared
to teaching engineers and commerce students how to write reports, and to
cope with business and other industrial communication situations. There
is a strong emphasis on linguistics and inter-personal communication.
Significantly, this kind of course is not available on Afrikaans
campuses. The differing emphases – Afrikaans universities on mass media
and English universities on mass media and English universities on
service courses – is indicative of two processes at work in society. The
first is that the growth of the Afrikaans language as the last to
develop in the world was greatly due to its popularization, initially
via the press, poetry and literature, and later through radio, film and
now television / 15. It is doubtful whether the Afrikaans -language
could have developed as it has without the impetus of the mass media.
The English language, being several centuries older, has no such
allegiance.

The
second point relates to the orientation of neo-colonial culture and
forms of mediated protest against Afrikaans localization and cultural
instance. The English language universities still tend to look to
Europe, particularly England for their cultural cue. More important,
however, is the disadvantage faced by school children of
English-language institutions which have been infiltrated by
Afrikaans-speaking teachers because of the preference by
English-speakers for business and commerce. The service courses have
become necessary because of the resulting inability of students to
communicate adequately at university level in their home language.

The
Witwatersrand University School of Dramatic Art is involved with the
mass media through its photography, film and television courses. Its
film theory options follow a reformist pattern, relying on a formalist
Metzian semiology, infused with an American positivist perspective,
notably the ideas of Goerge Gerbner and the Annenberg School .
Performance studies: is the unifying factor which facilitates an
analysis of the media ranging from ethnography on the one hand, through
the major film theories, to the study of narrative on the other. It’s
film and television courses are creatively oriented through narrative,
though with some excursions into documentary. The School is decidedly
liberal in comparison to the Afrikaans universities and aims to infuse
the students with a critical view of the media.

At
Rhodes, other than the print media courses, positivism and formalism
are subordinate to a semiotically-based (Peircian) Marxist analysis
which assumes some knowledge of development studies and the ideology of
technology. The emphasis is on documentary, direct-cinema/video and
structurally oriented ethnographic applications rather than narrative.
Like all the above mentioned courses, students are equipped with a
knowledge and skills to cope within conversational industrial practice,
but they are also taught how and when to exploit the gaps in the media
institution in the interests of a more democratic reportage.

The
course leader tries to ensure that the television production groups are
staffed with students who hold differing ideologies/ 16. Thus, instead
of being able to work in small groups with like-minded colleagues, the
groups are forced to argue out the details of interpretation and
intention by first examining their own individual assumptions.
Similarly, role playing of various technical positions is used, not only
to give an overall competence, but also to give an overall competence,
but also to equip students with an understanding of how semiotic
structures are subordinate to organisational arrangements.

The
Department also offers documentary video and narrative film theory and
production courses in the Rhodes Drama Department at honours level. The
latter works through orthodox theoretical approaches to formalist and
Marxist based semiotics/ semiology. The course applies the theory in the
analysis of specific films, as well as in the production of a short
narrative / 17. Further courses such as Third World Cinema, South
African cinema and critical methods are also offered.

Extra curricula courses

Media
theory and film criticism are also taught by other departments which as
English/ 18. fine arts and through extra-mural teaching centres
attached to the English-language campuses. The South African Film and
Television Technicians Association (SAFTTA) has also run a number of
courses since 1976. In 1983, a Centre for Direct Cinema was established
under the auspices of the University of Witwatersrand with the help of
the French government and Jean Rouch. The motivation behind the scheme
is that black South Africans will be given the opportunity to learn film
making skills and theory.

Critical Debate

Up until 1979, critical discussion of South African cinema was limited to the occasional article in New Nation, and a couple in the UNISA journal, Communication. Only one look had been written on the early industry/19. Unlike the French experience where journals like Cahiérs du Cinema and Positif were
not only at the forefront of a theoretical production interaction, but
challenged each other’s ideas, it was only with the first edition of my
own book/ 20, together with the inauguration of Critical arts and, more
particularly, The SAFTTA Journal in 1980, that any kind of continuing
debate began to occur, not only between academics, but between theorists
and progressives working within the industry.

Theory/Practice

Despite limited, but vibrant educational activities, both between and outside universities, little time is devoted to the link between
theory and practice in a neo-colonial context. The choice of film
studied, assumes that the only viable subjects are ‘art’ films, and so
whole areas of theory and history are ignored, particularly structural
analysis of South African Cinema. The emphasis on ‘art’ in the absence
of analysis of productive forces and relations of productions of
production has had the effect of entrenching a European and American
critical view, rather than stimulating a relevant, locally-informed
critical direction. As John van Zyl of the Witwatersrand School of
Dramatic Art comments: ‘ One
cannot separate film and television from other symbolic communication.
The attitude that art is an entity, non-art is an entity, politics is an
entity (not to mention sport!) and practical/technical proficiency is
an entity lies at the heart of totalitarianism. It is simplistic, it is
static and it leads to silence/ 21’.>>

One
of the consequences of the division of theory from practice is that few
technicians or even directors have an adequate knowledge of how feature
films work thematically, theoretically, or even how basic genres work.
History teaches that a national film industry will only progress
thematically and creatively if technical knowledge is paralleled with
theoretical and critical innovation. The former is unlikely to progress
without the latter. A sense of cinematic history, too, is a requisite
component, as is a knowledge of national history and the processes which
have shaped the society as it is today.

Inevitably,
the more progressive South African film/video maker /theorist still has
much to learn from his /her counterparts in South America and Africa
itself. Operating under the most repressive circumstances, these Third
World film makers have nonetheless forged distinct schools of film
making and developed theories, practices and styles which are aimed at
rediscovering their cultural heritage and re-establishing democracy.
Yet, most South African academics continue to look to the ‘art’ cinema
of Europe and America for their cue. Cinema from the Third World doesn’t
rank highly, if indeed it is acknowledge. The irony is that some of
this preferred ‘First World’ cinema is itself subversive, though it is
not interpreted as such. Even Marxists movies such as Bertollucci’s My Tragic Father,
screened at the Cape Town and Durban Festivals during 1982, is
politically divorced from its context by the local and imported
newspaper critics flown in from Johannesburg and London to lead
discussion. Yet if these same (mainly white) audiences were to be told
of the political implications of this film, they would perhaps refuse to
understand its Marxist significance. The Cape Town Festival is
organised by the Film Education Department of the University of Cape
town. Though aimed at extra-mural education, it rarely involves itself
with grassroots education in the wider community. The Durban Festival
uses the Durban University campus as a venue, but does attempt to move
films to the black communities. Elitist critical methods of choosing
films and discussants indicate a commercial intention to recoup costs
rather than to stimulate theoretical-production debate. It is rare that
the film makers themselves are involved in these Festivals.

Just
as South African audiences have been conditioned by decades of
Hollywood movies, so have many of our film practitioners and teachers.
Repeating reductionist bourgeois common sense, they constantly locate
South Africa in a dichotomous First/Third World situation, claiming that
whites belong to the First and blacks to the Third. They refuse, or
cannot see t the structural links between the two ‘worlds’, or more
specifically between poverty and wealth. That Third World film makers do
see these connections is best exemplified in Gary Crowdus’ interview
with Mahama Johnson Traore, a Senegalese film maker: During
(my period at college) I knew some very difficult times, either in my
own life, among my family, or around me. I lived in a well -to-do milieu
and also in a very poor milieu and if you have to determine which
milieu marked me most, it was certainly the poorest. At the time there
was also the experience of colonialism, the racial problem etc., so I
became conscious of who I was and in what sort of society I was living
>>/ 22.

Traore
might well have been talking about South Africa, and much else of what
he says about Senegal is analogous. Where Tomaselli and Hayman/ 23
discuss production as cultural practice and have set in motion
educational processes to stimulate a socially concerned, theoretically-
informed film and television production, Traore and other Third World
film makers have already, for a long time, been engaged in such
production. The points raised by Tomaselli and Hayman about involving
the subject community in the production of the film/video are reinforced
by Traore’s comments on the need for continued discussion on the need
for continued discussion and interaction with popular audiences.

The
politically-engaged cinema that Traore speaks of remains sceptical of
the more pragmatic approach outlined by van Zyl. While van Zly is
conscious of the problems outlined by Traore, and laments the death of
Third World films in South Africa, he is also aware of the institutional
constraints operating to restrict the extension of film and video
studies into socio-political contexts. He points to the inevitable
conflicts which occur when film and television are tucked into existing
departments of drama, communications or English.

Like
many other, van Zyl points to the lack of alternative distribution
channels for non-commercial productions. He points out that CCTV run by
business for training purposes is the fastest growing communication
industry at present in South Africa. White van Zyl dissociates himself
from the apartheid regime; he suggests that his graduates could be
gainfully employed by companies encouraging reform through their
in-house CCTV training. This approach, however, assumes that what
political ‘reform’ South Africa is presently undergoing, will have
democratising effects for blacks. This is the classic liberal position,
and ahs the effect of being largely supportive of the state’s
maneuverings to bring about a more stable class system.

Since
most South African universities take their cue from conservative
American production traditions in the case of ‘doing’ it is not
surprising that many local Departments emphasise the level of technology
and technique in the absence f studying the economic, social and
political forces which shape conventions, semiotic choices and
combinations, and what is taken for granted / 24. Rarely is the link
made between how the practice of production is governed by
capital-intensive bureaucracies or the ideological assumptions ingrained
into producers, directors and technicians through the capitalist
relations of production. This lack of critical concern for analysis of
context is partly due to the emphasis on vocational training ‘marketable
skills’ by the majority of film and television lecturers: get jobs in
the industry?’ is an over-riding concern. This attitude feeds into all
areas of capitalist practice and leads to departments applying the
principles of formula and efficiency in the evaluation of student work.
Consequently, a blind role specialisation becomes important and the
student accepts the formulaic procedures and techniques imposed upon him
/her by the department so that productions can be made in terms of what
will work in the market place. Alternatively, those lecturers who
insist on an ‘artistic’ approach, while perhaps hostile to the
conventions of commercial genres, similarly look for their models
elsewhere: the ‘best’ of European and American directors. Or as van Zyl
puts it: one would be foolish indeed not to recognise that
subjects… are being taught in a neo-colonial context in South Africa…
film dare not indulge itself with purely aesthetic studies of films of
Fellini! There are also the films of Ousmane Sembene of Senegal>>.
/ 25. Such a re-emphasis remains elitist for it continues to be
concerned with the ‘great men’ of cinema, with little attention being
given to the social, economic and political processes which have shaped
the very products of these individuals. Few courses go beyond a textual
analysis, asking why certain styles, techniques or genres are used. In other words, the text is foregrounded over context.

Conclusion

Paradoxically,
although the administrative structure of South African departments has
not separated out production from theory /history/criticism as in many
American and French institutions, the benefits of this marriage are
rarely seen. Very often, students are not even able to develop a praxis
which conjoins style with subject. This lack of progress is mainly due
to the contradictions which bedevil media departments which lack a
theoretical-practical symbiosis. The practical production courses often
imitate industry practice, the ‘ways things will be done’ The
history and theory course, however, often taught by the same lecturers,
simultaneously introduce the student to historical and theoretical
alternatives without providing them with the skills or opportunity to
implement these alternatives. The student thus finds him/herself between
theoretical applications and historical instance on the one hand, and
conversational reproductive practice on the other.

‘Learning
by doing’ -whether manipulating a video game or producing a movie
-takes for granted the assumptions of the manufacturers in how their
equipment will be used in industrial practice. A Friedberg points out,
a simple image on the screen is not good enough>>, we
need to pierce the opacity of that image. Whether we think that it
represents ‘craft’, whether we think that it represents ‘reality’ or a
‘window to reality’, this paper has attempted to argue that the
derivation of the simple image>> is a very complex process
which extends far beyond the disciplines of film and television. It
originates from the bowels of the institutions which own and control the
media, and its profit-generating applications are reinforced and
legitimized by universities which are part of the ideological apparatus
of the state.

This paper has
set out to question this orientation, to argue the case for the
teaching of media in the interests of democracy rather than the
entrenchment of the asymmetrical distribution of wealth, particularly in
South Africa.

Acknowledgement

I should like to thank Graham Hayman for his helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

/1. See

Other references on media education at South African universities:

Graham Hayman, ‘Television in Journalism: Problems, Aims and Solutions’, The SAFTTA Journal, Vol. 1, 1980, 15-19

Paul Cockburn, ‘Seminar: ‘Further into Film and Television’, The SAFTTA Journal, Vol., 1980, 25-27

Keyan Tomaselli, ‘The teaching of Film and Television Production: A Statement of Philosophy and Objectives’, Perspectives in Education, Vol. 4, 1980, 66-74.

Notes

/1. See Fanie van der Merwe and CH Theunissen, Film produksie by die Technikon van Pretoria, The SAFTTA Journal, Vol. 1, 1980, 1-5

/2. See Keyan G. Tomaselli, The Teaching of Film and Television Production in a Third World Context: The Case of South Africa, The Journal of the University Film and Video Association, 1981, Vol. 34, 3-12

/3. See, e.g. JS Saul and S Gelb, The crisis in South Africa: Class Defense, Class Revolution, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1981.

/4. See, e.g., Glen Moss, Total Strategy, Working in Progress, No. 11, 1980, 1-11

/5. See, e.g., Harod Wolpe, Capitalism and Cheap Labour Power: From Segregation to Apartheid, Economy and Society, No. 4, 1974.

/6. See HC Marais and L. Dreyer, HSRC Investigation into Inter Group Relations: The Programme and its financing, Communicare, Vol. 3, 3-7

/7. Pieter Fourie, How can the South African film industry be rescued from its flight?, Rapport,
21 June 1981. This news report was a distillation of a study
commissioned by the Department of Industries. It is also the basis of
his Ph.D. Thesis , accepted in 1982, by UNISA.

/8.
For further analysis on this point see Keyan G. Tomaselli, Ideology and
Cultural Production in South African Cinema, Ph.D. Thesis, University
of Witwatersrand, 1983, 263-271.

/9. J. M. Peters, Pictorial Communication, David Phillip, Cape Town.

/10. Pieter Fourie and Gertruida du Plooy, Film and Television Training at the Dept of Communications at UNISA, The SAFTTA Journal, Vol. 1, 1980, 20-23

/11. For a brief outline see ibid, 20-22

/12. See Arnold de Beer, Joernalistiek Vandag, Tafelberg, Cape Town, 1982.

/13. Fourie and du Plooy, op. cit.

/14. See Stephen Finn, Hellen Weich and Ronel Rensburg, Professional Persuasion, Butterworths, Durban.

/15.
Afrikaans was recognised as the second official language in 1925.
Unlike most languages which grew organically, new words to account for
technological progress are manufactured by a language service bureau.
These are then popularised through the Afrikaans-language media, and
schools.

/16.
Unlike the Afrikaans universities this is possible at the
English-language institutions because of their acceptance of black
students. Rhodes being the only department offering journalism and media
studies as a discipline, has a usually high percentage of black
students in comparison to other departments. The total enrollment of
blacks to the university as a whole is, however, forcefully limited by
the state..

/17.
Rhodes offers the most highly capitalized film and television courses
outside the Technikon, though the Witwatersrand School of Dramatic Art
teaches the most intensive theory, history and criticism courses.

/18. Alex Davids, Film as art at UCT [Cape Town University], The SAFTTA Journal, Vol. 1, 1980, 24-27

/19. Thelma Gutsche, The History and Social Significance of Motion Pictures in South Africa 1985-1940, Howard Timmins, Cape Town, 1972.

/20. Keyan G. Tomaselli, The South African Film Industry, African Studies, Institute, Univ. of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 1979. Second edition, 1980.

/21. John van Zyl, Beyond Film and Television Studies: With Jobs for Whom? In Keyan G. Tomaselli and Graham Hayman (eds.), Perspectives on the Teaching of Film and Television, Department of Journalism and Media Studies, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, 1984 (forthcoming)

/22. Cinema in Africa must be a School? Interview with Mahama Johnson Traore, Cineaste, Vol. 6, 32-35

/23. Tomaselli, op. cit 1982; Tomaselli and Graham Hayman, From Orality to Visuality, in Tomaselli and Hayman, op. cit. 1984.

/24. Keyan G. Tomaselli and Graham Haayman, Conference Report: First National Student Film and Video Festival, Critical Arts, Vol. 2, 1981, 80-83.

/25. Van Zyl, op. cit.