Theoretical Framework, Sources and Structure

An important focal point for this thesis has already been outlined: the arguments of Anderson on the connection between mass media and the nation as an imagined community form the background for the study and resonate throughout. But on a more abstract level, the analysis of the role of media in society has much to gain from the analytical tools developed in the Cultural Studies paradigm. Stuart Halls "encod-ing/decoding" model provides a loose framework for this thesis, as he identifies the different steps in a mass media communication process that is in essence under-stood as a process of interaction between society and media institutions. Instead of implying, as does the earlier (and more abstract) transmission model, a one-way

76 cf. Turino 2000, 99-104.

77 cf. e.g. "Sendung läuft – in Kwangali, Mbukushu oder Gciriku? Sprachenvielfalt und dennoch nationale Einheit – die Zielsetzungen des namibischen Rundfunks, in: Namibia Wirtschaft 10, 1987 (no page numbers given). NBC Information Service: Newspaper Clippings.

78 cf. Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity, Stanford; Lazarus, Neil. 1999.

Introduction: Hating Tradition Properly, in: Nationalism and Cultural Practice in the Postcolonial World, Cambridge, 1-16.

79 Giddens, Anthony. 1987. The Nation-State and Violence (A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, vol. II), Berkeley, 12. quot. in Lazarus 1999, 5.

communication from sender through medium/message to receiver⁸⁰, Halls model em-phasises not just the interdependency of the steps involved in the process, but also their individual agency:

"It is […] possible (and useful) to think of this process [of communication, RH] in terms of a struc-ture produced and sustained through the articulation of linked but distinctive moments – production, circulation, distribution/consumption, reproduction. This would be to think of the process as a 'complex structure in dominance', sustained through the articulation of connected practices, each of which, how-ever, retains its distinctiveness and has its own specific modality."⁸¹

Therefore, it is best suited to examine the complex interactions that play out around radio in both colonial and postcolonial societies, since significant agency is at-tributed to reception without neglecting the power structures that shape the process.

This thesis aligns the chapters along the moments Hall identified, looking specifically at how institutions were structured (Chapter 2), how media content was produced and under what circumstances (Chapter 3), what programmes were produced under these circumstances (Chapter 4) and how listeners reacted to them (Chapter 5). De-spite this seemingly linear progression, interactions will be taken into account, so that the chapter on broadcasters entails a discussion of how broadcasters have dealt with the infrastructure, and the chapter on audiences also studies how broadcasters have dealt with listeners, and vice versa.

This focus on agency and interaction is especially useful when analysing specific ideological effects of media in societies. To focus on nationalism and nation-building and its effects in (post-)colonial African societies entails the danger of all too easy, lin-ear cause-effect assumptions if one fails to take agency and interaction into account.

This is especially important to keep in mind when dealing with relatively

homo-geneous, hierarchical institutions such as broadcasters controlled by the state. It is all too easy to assume that, because they were under more or less direct control of the state,⁸² broadcasting stations acted as Althusserian ideological state apparatuses,

re-80 Laswell, Harold D. 1948. The Structure and Function of Communication in Society, in: Bryson, Lyman (ed.) The Communication of Ideas, New York, 37-51. This relatively mechanistic

"transmission model" of communication has been adapted to different fields of study, for example in sociology, but also in mathematics, IT and literary studies. cf. Shannon, Claude E./Warren Weaver. 1949 The Mathematical Theory of Communication, Urbana; Jakobson, Roman. 1960.

Closing Statements: Linguistics and Poetics, in: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.): Style In Language, Cambridge (Mass.), 350–77.

81 Hall, Stuart. 1980. Encoding/Decoding, in: Hall, Stuart et al. (ed.): Culture, Media, Language:

Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-79, New York, 128-38, 128.

82 The immense variations and complexities of the relationship of (post-)colonial states with their broadcasting stations are discussed in Chapter 2.

lating ideology directly to the consumer. While the extent and parameters of control shaped the process and the possibilities of agency, at no point did they shut them off completely. Because radio connects the public realm with the private home quite di-rectly (a source of anguish to Fanon and the Algerian listeners he describes), its ef-fect had often been interpreted as exposing the private realm to state control.⁸³ But this effect also goes the other way: because radio listening is a private activity – ex-cept for public listening stations like the Boma or a local beer hall – it gives the listen-er significant control and choice ovlisten-er what to hear, when and how to hear it. A Voice of Namibia broadcaster explained his experience in listening to the SWABC in Na-mibia like this: "When it was music people sat and listened. When the news came they would say 'Ah, stop that Radio Puppet."⁸⁴ The argument needs to be made not only for reception, but for all "moments" identified by Hall, and the relations between them. For example, broadcasters in both cases presented here used whatever small spaces left to them in sometimes highly controlled and censored environments to en-gage in meaningful, subversive communication with listeners. At the same time, the hierarchy in the stations could often be undermined by superiors protecting broad-casters against too much government interference. On the other hand, broadbroad-casters could comply with the ideological tenets underlying work in the station and willfully apply them to the point where they saw their work as following the classic values of independent journalism. Listeners, on their part possessed a not insignificant power in influencing programme content and station policy.

Hall and the Cultural Studies approach as a whole are influenced greatly by Marx-ist theory. Developed through critical examination of structuralMarx-ist theory, and specifi-cally Louis Althusser, Cultural Studies reverted to Antonio Gramsci's theory of

ideology and hegemony, reevaluating central aspects of it. In analysing the details of how models such as the nation were negotiated between the state, the agents of the state and society, it is however necessary to go back to Gramsci's original writings, in order to avoid seeing the categories he develops solely through the lens of Cultural Studies.⁸⁵ This is especially important here because the original categories allow for

83 cf. n. 5.

84 Mosia et al. 1994, 10

85 The image of Gramscian theory is, for all its credit, until today heavily blurred by Raymond Williams' reading of it. Williams, who based his interpretation on a selective and heavily abridged English edition of Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, was mainly interested in developing "a theory of the specificities of material cultural and literary production within historical materialism." (Williams, Raymond. 1977. Marxism and Literature, Oxford). Therefore, he operates with a concept of culture different from the one that informs this thesis. Kate Crehan also criticises that in Williams'

greater flexibility and adaptation to a social and political context that ist very different from that of post-war European societies that are in the focus of the works of Hall and Williams.

A return to Gramscian categories can help clear the complex and sometimes con-tradictory issues analysed here. It is nevertheless important to historicise these cat-egories and not to be content with one fixed, immutable definition of what ideology or hegemony is. In any case, such a definition, as many theorists and researchers have lamented, is not to be had from looking at Gramsci's major theoretical work, not just because of its incomplete and preliminary character or the difficult context in which the Prison Notebooks were written, but "precisely because it does not describe any kind of easily delineated relationship. Rather, it is a way of marking out ever-shifting, highly protean relationships of power which can assume quite different forms in diffe-rent contexts."⁸⁶ Hegemony, for Gramsci, is not a fixed theoretical concept, but rather a term for the problem of power relations and their (re-)production in the capitalist na-tion-state that he wants to explore. In this context, it designates power relations de-fined by the poles of realm of the state (political society) vs. private realm (civil soci-ety), and consent vs. coercion. In different historical analyses – for example, revolu-tionary France or Italy during the Risorgimento –, he uses it differently. Therefore, the concept is problem-oriented, highly adaptable and can be changed according to the historical context under analysis. It avoids the strong normative implications other models on the role of media in society have implied,⁸⁷ and allows for an analysis of interdependencies, e.g. between society and the state.

Ideology, after Gramsci, is not an openly communicated set of ideas, but rather "a conception of the world that is implicitly manifest in art, in law, in economic activity and in all manifestations of individual and collective life."⁸⁸ Gramsci determines the

interpretation, "Gramsci is reduced to a theorist of hegemony" and "that this hegemony is a thin and impoverished version of a much more complex, but also far more interesting, interrogation of power and its mechanisms." (Crehan, Kate. 2002. Gramsci, Culture and Anthropology,

London/Sterling, 171). The still influential edition Williams had to refer to was the only translated version of Gramscis writings for nearly two decades. cf. Hoare, Quentin/Geoffrey N. Smith (eds.) 1973. Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, London. Joseph Buttigiegs translated edition of the complete notebooks took another fifteen years to be completed, as did the German translation edited by Wolfgang Fritz Haug et al. cf. Gramsci, Antonio. 1992-2007.

Prison Notebooks (3 vols.), New York; Gramsci, Antonio. 1991-2002. Gefängnishefte. Kritische Gesamtausgabe (10 vols.), Hamburg. For practical reasons, the German translation is used in this study, and, if necessary, English translations are taken from Hoares and Smiths "Selections".

86 Crehan 2002, 101.

87 specifically the Critical Theory models evident in Adorno or Habermas' works discussed above.

88 Gramsci 1973, 328.

concept by contrasting it with that of hegemony. Raymond Williams, and the Cultural Studies theorists following him, emphasised the cultural aspects of hegemony, and his interpretation proved so attractive to many scholars that it stuck. Gramsci how-ever, though sometimes shifting his focus, always maintained that hegemony "in-volves 'practical activity', and the social relations that produce inequality, as well as the ideas by which that inequality is justified, explained, normalised, and so on."⁸⁹ Thus, in Gramsci's writings, the problem of hegemony is invariably connected to cul-tural as well as social and political processes; in hegemony, the three influence each other reciprocally. Power, writes Gramsci, is performed in different ways: as coercive power, involving violent means or structural violence and repression, and in a more consensual way, as "intellectual and moral leadership." Hegemony, then, is "a permanent practice, a notion of the world constantly fought over in struggles for recognition, with which a moral, political and intellectual leadership is established."⁹⁰ The decisive point for this thesis is that Gramsci emphasises the permanent strug-gles which are fought over hegemony and its function in the production of consent. Its consensual nature is at play not only in democratic societies, but also in more repres-sive political systems, because any type of power needs consensus, to a greater or lesser degree.

Similar observations can be made for civil society in these examples. Again, this requires the abandoning of conceptions of "civil society" that include political, social or even moral values. The term became widely popular in the wake of the democratic revolutions that accompanied the downfall of Soviet-style communism in Eastern Europe, but was also taken up by political analysts in the context of the African "Se-cond Wave of Democracy". But these analysts referred to traditions different from the Gramscian, notably a notion of "civil society" that equates it with either democratic ideas of a citizens' public in the "Polis" or the peaceful cooperation of economically equal, bourgeois subjects. Both attach political and moral (positive) values to the con-cept, both include a binary opposition between the state and civil society, and both have since been criticised, especially in the context of political developments on the

89 Ibid., 174.

90 "eine permanente Praxis, eine in Anerkennungskämpfen ausgefochtene Weltauffassung, mit der eine moralische, politische und intellektuelle Führung etabliert wird." Buckel, Sonja/Andreas Fischer-Lescano. 2007. Hegemonie im globalen Recht – Zur Aktualität der Gramscianischen Rechtstheorie, in: (eds.): Hegemonie gepanzert mit Zwang. Zivilgesellschaft und Politik im Staatsverständnis Antonio Gramscis, Baden-Baden, 85-101, 89. my translation.

African continent.⁹¹ For Gramsci, who represents a "third stream"⁹², societá civile, al-though contrasted with societá politica – the State – is not an opposing force, but ra-ther a field in which all private actors (this includes companies, NGOs, and political organisations; in the context relevant here, political groups defined along ethnic lines, such as the Namibian "Interessengemeinschaft Deutschsprachiger Südwester" (IG), are also included) struggle for hegemony.⁹³ The state, however, because it takes over functions such as education in modern, capitalist societies, is also an actor in this field. Thus, the state radios analysed here are situated at an intersection of the state and civil society, and are supposed to influence the latter, although they are also strongly influenced by other actors in civil society. This is an important insight, be-cause it enables us to analyse a seemingly monolithic, state-controlled institution such as the radios presented here without falling into the trap of seeing them simply as "ideological state apparatuses" or "Transmissionsriemen" of ruling ideologies. It al-lows for a thorough analysis of the dynamics at play, showing that radio, despite its technical setup, is not just one-way communication. This will become especially clear in Chapter 5, but informs the analysis as a whole.

It is important to remember that Gramsci developed these categories in empirical studies that were concerned with the history and political processes of his times; and that he developed them to serve a practical political purpose, communist revolution in Western Europe and the fight against fascism. Thus, as Stuart Hall has remarked,

"[t]o make more general use of them, they have to be delicately disinterred from their concrete and specific historical embeddedness and transplanted to new soil with con-siderable care and patience."⁹⁴ These categories cannot be simply transferred from a politically motivated analysis of the development of the nation-state in 19th Century Italy to a historical one of media and nation-building in 1945 colonial and post-colonial states. We can nevertheless heed Hall's advice and look at these categories in the light of the empirical data at hand. Therefore, this thesis operates rather loosely

91 cf. Chabal/Daloz 1999, 17-30.

92 Thiery, Peter. 1992. Zivilgesellschaft – ein liberales Konzept?, in: Lauth, H.J./Manfred Mols and Werner Weidenfeld (eds.): Zur Relevanz theoretischer Diskurse: Überlegungen zu

Zivilgesellschaft, Toleranz, Grundbedürfnissen, Normanwendung und sozialen Gerechtigkeitsutopien, Mainz, 69-87.

93 A third field is that of political economy, or, in orthodox Marxist terms, the "basis". The state, for Gramsci, is "the instrument to adapt civil society to the economic structure." Gramsci 1991-2002, 1267 (Book 10 (II), §15), my translation.

94 Hall, Stuart. 1986. Gramscis Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, in: Journal of Communication Inquiry 10:2, 5-27, 6.

with them, using the categories of ideology, hegemony, and civil society to develop a critical understanding of the political, social, and cultural dynamics at play in colonial and postcolonial Zambian and Namibian electronic media.

Sources

The sources for such an undertaking have to be varied. While official sources such as Annual Reports, laws and regulations, official communication, and publica-tions form the framework of the study, they leave many quespublica-tions unanswered and often tell us more about the image the stations wanted to project to the public rather than the actual processes inside the station. Specifically middle and lower manage-ment communication and protocols, as well as monthly reports from the different channels, provide a picture of the internal structure and processes at play.⁹⁵ Added to this are newspaper reports, and, more importantly, editorial comment and listeners' letters about the role radio was supposed to play in colonial and postcolonial soci-eties.

Additionally, Chapter 4 in particular relies heavily on programme content. Radio programmes are held in the Sound Archives of the stations.⁹⁶ However, it is important to take into account that these Archives have not been established for historical re-search but to make music and previously recorded items available for broadcasters to use in new programmes. This effects the selection of archival material and the cri-teria for which items to keep. Most regrettably, it means that live chat shows are not kept in the Sound Archives. While these would be of extraordinary value to historians in general and to this thesis in particular (seeing as many discussed issues of nation-al unity and nationnation-al reconciliation), they have no further use for broadcasters, be-cause the discussions quickly become outdated. The Zambian station hosts a dis-proportionate number of 'official' programmes (such as colonial political events or

95 In Namibia, these could be significantly supplemented with internal communication and

documentation still held in the Archives of the Information Services in the NBC (hereafter cited as NBC Information Services). In the case of Zambia, the lack of internal documentation at the now Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) and the lack of access to the Federal Papers at the National Archives of Zambia (NAZ) could be compensated by holdings in the BBC Written Archives Centre (BBC WAC), because the Corporation kept close contact with the new

broadcaster until well after independence. Some internal communication from the Federal broadcaster can also be found in the "Papers of the Rt. Hon. Sir Roy Welensky, KCMG, 1907-1991" collection in the Rhodes House Library in Oxford (Welensky Papers).

96 In Namibia, this is the Sound Archive of the Information Department in the NBC (NBC Sound Archives); in Zambia, the Sound Archive of the ZNBC (ZNBC Sound Archive).

speeches by Kaunda and other government representatives), but few everyday items, such as music and entertainment programmes (it nevertheless commands an impressive collection of Zambian music recorded since the 1950s). Another restriction involves language. No items produced in languages other than English and German could be closely analysed. This problem is partly made up for by the fact that many of the programmes that were deemed valuable to archive are available in English, and many of the non-English programmes can be reconstructed through descriptions available in other sources, such as programme magazines.

Recorded audio sources such as these programmes possess some attributes that make them different from written sources. It is important to acknowledge these cha-racteristics, as Chapter 4 shows. First of all, audio recordings transmit a host of addi-tional information; radio practitioners very consciously consider how to develop the soundscape of a specific programme, even when a large part of it is speech.⁹⁷ This means that when analysing programmes, one can not just rely on the text, but also needs to take into account the subtle messages revealed by sound. The choice of music can convey important messages, as does the choice of speakers. Marisa Moorman relates that Angolan listeners loved Congolese Rumba for the simple fact

Recorded audio sources such as these programmes possess some attributes that make them different from written sources. It is important to acknowledge these cha-racteristics, as Chapter 4 shows. First of all, audio recordings transmit a host of addi-tional information; radio practitioners very consciously consider how to develop the soundscape of a specific programme, even when a large part of it is speech.⁹⁷ This means that when analysing programmes, one can not just rely on the text, but also needs to take into account the subtle messages revealed by sound. The choice of music can convey important messages, as does the choice of speakers. Marisa Moorman relates that Angolan listeners loved Congolese Rumba for the simple fact