Browsing by Author "Aiseng, Kealeboga"

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Blackening the silver screen: a cinema of black consciousness in South Africa
(2017) Aiseng, Kealeboga
A positive development emerged in the early 1990s in the South African film industry when the government started to see cinema as one of the institutions to forge social cohesion in the processes of democratization and development (Botha, 2005). However, the country’s industry is still struggling with many problems such as establishing and developing the local audience for its products, domination of international films in both cinemas and television, insufficient film-funding development and paying too much attention on Hollywood standards. This dissertation critically studies the state of post-apartheid South African cinema. The main feature this study addresses is that no critical framework exists for analyzing post-apartheid film in terms of how they address or represent socio-political factors, especially factors relating to black sensibility. It is important to understand the role that filmmakers have played to incorporate issues of black sensibility in South African cinema since the end of apartheid. As a result, the author developed the first framework of its kind, referred to as a ‘cinema of Black Consciousness’. The author draws on scholarship on black emancipation, Black Consciousness, African Renaissance and Afrocentricity to develop such an analytical framework. This scholarship enhances the feasibility of a cinema of Black Consciousness not only as a South African framework, but as a framework that can be used to analyse any film that seeks to represent the socio-politico struggles of the black people. In order to test the framework, this study analysed two post-apartheid South African films, Life, Above All (2010, Oliver Schmitz), Elelwani (2012, Ntshaveni wa Luruli). The study concludes that some films produced in South African cinema introduce a film culture that seeks to represent the needs and the struggle of black people. However, a problem remains with regards to the country’s institutional structures – herein referred to as structural censorship – such as funding and distribution agencies that continue to marginalize black-centred films.
Critical analysis and assessment of language policy and implementation in South Africa: South African Broadcasting Corporation’s Soap Operas
(2024) Aiseng, Kealeboga
South Africa is a country with a heavy political past, having gone through colonialism, and Apartheid. The country’ history brewed ideologies of exclusion and inclusion, empowerment, and disempowerment. Among these were linguistic issues. In 1994, South Africa officially became a democratic country, with a new Constitution adopted in 1996. The South African Constitution is globally recognised for its principles of freedom, equality, reconciliation, and multiculturalism. Post-Apartheid South Africa also saw the significant role that can be played by popular culture in redressing the mistakes of the past. Hence, popular culture in post-Apartheid South Africa was given a task of healing the wounds of the past and building a united South Africa. The problem, however, is that linguistically, a new world order of exclusion and inclusion, empowerment and disempowerment is emerging in post-Apartheid South Africa, and this exists among indigenous languages in South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). This thesis is an attempt to offer a sociolinguistic analysis of how the SABC television, with SABC 1 and SABC 2 as examples the public broadcaster’s shortcomings in implementing its own language policy. This has led to both SABC 1 and SABC 2 using languages in such a way that does not reflect the linguistic realities and linguistic demographics of South Africa. Furthermore, the thesis’ analysis has also established that there is an ongoing production and distribution of ideologies of whiteness in one of the SABC’s soap operas. These issues sum up the interest of this thesis. Ultimately, the thesis has reached a conclusion that the SABC language policy is failing the small-status linguistic and cultural groups in South Africa.