3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions

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Against humanity: misanthropy in contemporary dystopian literature
(2023) Perner, Nicola
This dissertation examines the significance of misanthropy in contemporary speculative fiction, using Walkaway by Cory Doctorow and Autonomous by Annalee Newitz as examples. By analysing the novels’ response to the context of the Anthropocene and liquid modernity, it is shown that misanthropy arises from a sense of powerlessness and existential fear in the unseating of anthropocentrism. Walkaway and Autonomous construct transhuman and posthuman subjectivity, respectively, to investigate the potentials and limitations of the human being. In doing so, they reflect fears and desires for the future, and demonstrate the role of hope in its construction. Walkaway shows a transhuman techno-utopia as an escape from the existential fear that drives its misanthropic vision of bodies as disposable and minds as unreliable. Autonomous presents a bio-entrapment view of existence, and suggests that artificial intelligence is an ideal unattainable by humans. Both types of misanthropy provide valuable insight into our current context, collective psyche, and the issue of responsibility, and demonstrate the necessity of a more balanced approach to human existence that includes embodiment, affective intelligence, and the entirety of Earth’s systems.
Beauty in violence: (Re) imagining violence and trauma in Yvonne Vera’s without a name and under the tongue
(2021) Mojapelo, Lebohang Rachel
This research report is a study of how Yvonne Vera re-imagines violence and trauma by creating alternative ways to narrate the traumatic experiences of women, creating both new spaces for them to speak and highlighting possibilities of healing. This study will focus on two of Yvonne Vera’s texts Under the Tongue and Without a Name and how they form part of lineage in black women’s writing that congregates around beautiful expression in order to capture black women’s experience. Both texts deal with particularly difficult forms of violence: incest, rape, and infanticide. It is the contention of this study that while violent and traumatic experiences are difficult to speak of and narrate Vera manages to do so in a manner that maintains the dignity of her characters. This research therefore aims to highlight that through the use of aesthetics and transcending the limitations of ordinary language and physical space, Vera’s characters occupy new spaces in which to express themselves. Vera contributes to the discourse on trauma and re-imagines violence and trauma, encouraging us to find new perspectives on both while creatively forming new ways of speaking to violence within African literary studies, ways that continue to be reflected in contemporary women’s writing and poetry.
Chinese and US digital diplomacy in South Africa: An analysis of Facebook during the Covid-19 lockdown
(2023) Petje, Nomzamo
Digital diplomacy is a new concept in diplomacy generally and more specifically in public diplomacy. It emanated from the emergence of the internet and digital technologies in the 1990s and has been practised since then. The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in 2019 (Covid-19) ushered in novel communication and diplomatic practices. Diplomats still needed to influence and improve their countries’ image to their foreign publics. Digital diplomacy was the most viable option for them to successfully ply their craft during a pandemic. Since the 1990s, diplomats and ministries of foreign affairs (MFAs) have been going digital. The gaps in the field and the scarcity of literature on the topic highlight the importance of and the need for more research. Due to the novelty of digital diplomacy, there is no formal definition of the concept yet; instead, there are myriad definitions influenced by a different understanding of scholars who define it from their different vantage points. This study focused on Chinese and US digital diplomacy because their digital diplomacy strategies have not focused on the Global South or South Africa. The study established their successes and failures in using digital diplomacy strategies towards South Africa. The research is significant in that it highlights the need for diplomats to adapt in practising their craft. The study highlights the complementary nature of digital diplomacy to public diplomacy and its importance during a pandemic. The significance of the study is in its ability to demonstrate the symbiotic relationship between digital diplomacy and public diplomacy and how it contributes to the field of journalism and diplomacy since the advent of social media. The research used digital diplomacy and media theories, such as agenda setting and framing, alongside the qualitative network analysis method. The data collection approach was by means of surfing the relevant embassies’ Facebook pages to find posts that fell into the chosen period for this study through sampling and by creating a code sheet. The methodology section below explains in detail how we used the method, how data was obtained, and the period.
Confluent auteurism: a psychoanalytic approach to adaptation
(2023) Wolfson, Simon David
When asked if they cultivate a particular style, the Coen Brothers – who are widely regarded as consummate auteurs, that is, directors with such a distinctive style that they are regarded as the authors of their films – replied: ‘I don’t think there’s a thread, at least a conscious thread, anyway, between the stories we’re telling… it’s what you call style in retrospect only’. Despite this repudiation, filmgoers from the casual to the cinephile ardently affirm the Coens’ ‘auteur’ status. While lauded for their original screenplays, the Coens’ adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel No Country for Old Men has received wide critical acclaim. I contend it is such a successful adaptation that it seems both Coenesque and McCarthyesque – a perfect melding of two distinctive authorial voices. It may seem contradictory to group ‘melding’ and ‘distinctive’ in the same sentence, however, our imaginations are capable of holding and assimilating what seems ‘black and white’ into a general sensation of confluence. When we read a novel, pictures are generated in our mind’s eye. These images are called phantasies. The word phantasy is drawn from the field of psychoanalysis and is used widely across many theorisations. The Lacanian film theorist, Cristian Metz, deployed ‘phantasy’ most compellingly as a marker of the images we generate when we read texts. When we watch adaptations of novels we love, our phantasies are challenged by the potent medium of the cinema. Our most common reaction to the adaptation is: ‘it wasn’t as good as the book’. Rarer is the sensation of confluence that I experienced with the Coens’ adaptation. I am interested in why we either ‘spit out’ the film or lovingly embrace it as a ‘faithful’ reproduction of the text. Since this dialectic seems to have only been obliquely explored in the past, I have coined a new term: confluent auteurism. In this dissertation, I approach this experience of confluent auteurism from several psychoanalytically informed angles. What I reveal not only bears on adaptation and auteur studies but also reader-response and reception theory. Ranging from Lacan’s theory of the gaze and Klein’s object relations to Barthes’ ‘pleasure of the text’, I engage in a hermeneutic voyage of discovery. Ideas, like phantasies, are malleable. My theoretical formulation will be advanced, problematised and reformulated throughout the course of this dissertation illustrating how the invention of a new terminology is as much enmeshed in existing thought as texts are in other texts.
Content analysis of Donga Mantung community radio’s coverage of the Anglophone crisis: 1 July 2020 to 31 December 2020
(2023-03) Ngala, Hansel Wenda
What is today termed the “Anglophone Crisis” in the Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon is a nuanced problem dating back to the 1960s. It involves an on-going civil war between separatists and the government of Cameroon. Simmering tensions between the warring parties i.e. government soldiers and separatists, boiled over in 2017 when separatists declared the independence of “Ambazonia” – their preferred name for the region (International Crisis Group, 2017). What followed was a brutal crackdown on both separatist fighters and civilians deemed by government forces to be in support of secession. The media have also been targeted and journalists have been jailed and others killed in relation to their reporting on the conflict (CPJ, 2017). This study sought to understand how Donga Mantung Community Radio (DMCR) in the Northwest of Cameroon has reported on the on the conflict, through a content analysis of forty news bulletins aired between 1 July 2020 to 31 December 2020. The bulletins were analyzed to understand how the news stories are framed, including the use of language to describe the different actors in the conflict and the dominant themes reported on in the conflict. It found that the station took an overwhelmingly pro-government position in the conflict. It also found that although it appears to take a position supportive of the well-being of community of listeners, the lack of a clear, independent editorial agenda results in reporting that does not always favour the safety and economic well-being of its listeners. Overall, it does not help to de-escalate the conflict by promoting a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
Even poodles can fly: a collection of essays, including a reflecting essay
(2019-06) Thompson, Wesley Roland
Expansion of South African Xitsonga terminology through importing from agrarian pursuits of Xitsonga linguistic communities in Mozambique and Zimbabwe
(2023) Mabunda, Godfrey Machisana
This research report delves into the redundancy of the agrarian terminology in South African Xitsonga. Agrarianism signifies farming and spirituality in a rural setting. As the mainstay of Vatsonga culture, the agricultural lifestyle boasts a host of terminology attached to it. There is an overt need for agrarian terminology in the South African Xitsonga today to enhance its lexicon. This study posits that the erosion of agrarian terminology in the South African Xitsonga can be linked to the disruption of native farming by colonial powers and the far-reaching effects that Christianity had on Vatsonga faith, which had exisited since antiquity. The intellectualisation of Xitsonga also facilitated the eschewing and eventual loss of the longstanding agricultural elements of the language. The Xitsonga linguistic communities in Mozambique and Zimbabwe still use some of the agrarian terminology that could serve to aid the expansion of South African Xitsonga.
Hope in despair: expropriated for political expediency - my family’s fading cries for ancestral land
(2021) Seale, Lebohang
The signing into law of the South African constitution in 1996 was widely expected to provide redress for communities that suffered land dispossession during white colonial rule, among other imperatives. The Restitution of Land Rights Act of 1994, and especially Section 25 of the constitution, specifically affirmed an individual’s right to land restitution. As such, there were great expectations that the Natives Land Act of 1913 and other subsequent legislations on land dispossession would be reversed. As is well documented, land reform in South Africa has been painfully slow and complex. A distinguishing feature of this longform narrative article is that it is told through the voices of a family and community members who share their darkest moments of living and working on white people’s farms and their struggle to reclaim their land. The research established that not only is the ideal of land reform in South Africa a monumental failure and disappointment, but that it is a veritable betrayal that can be damaging on affected people whose quest for restorative justice remains elusive. It shows our community’s struggle in reclaiming their ancestral land. After almost a quarter of a century since we lodged our land claim, we have nothing to show for it. This is also a family story about the travails of lifting ourselves out of the morass of poverty and deprivation, wrought by land dispossession and forced removals. Interviews with white farmers whose properties are under the land claims show that land reform can be a polarising issue that threatens national unity, if not dealt with prudently, expeditiously and judiciously. This research project consists of two parts, a longform narrative and a scholarly piece that underpins it.
Hope in despair: expropriated for political expediency my family’s fading cries for ancestral land
(2021) Seale, Lebogang
The signing into law of the South African constitution in 1996 was widely expected to provide redress for communities that suffered land dispossession during white colonial rule, among other imperatives. The Restitution of Land Rights Act of 1994, and especially Section 25 of the constitution, specifically affirmed an individual’s right to land restitution. As such, there were great expectations that the Natives Land Act of 1913 and other subsequent legislations on land dispossession would be reversed. As is well documented, land reform in South Africa has been painfully slow and complex. A distinguishing feature of this longform narrative article is that it is told through the voices of a family and community members who share their darkest moments of living and working on white people’s farms and their struggle to reclaim their land. The research established that not only is the ideal of land reform in South Africa a monumental failure and disappointment, but that it is a veritable betrayal that can be damaging on affected people whose quest for restorative justice remains elusive. It shows our community’s struggle in reclaiming their ancestral land. After almost a quarter of a century since we lodged our land claim, we have nothing to show for it. This is also a family story about the travails of lifting ourselves out of the morass of poverty and deprivation, wrought by land dispossession and forced removals. Interviews with white farmers whose properties are under the land claims show that land reform can be a polarising issue that threatens national unity, if not dealt with prudently, expeditiously and judiciously. This research project consists of two parts, a longform narrative and a scholarly piece that underpins it.
Hospital hill
(2020-03) Enslin-Payne, Samantha
Poppy stood in a narrow strip of shade, but it was no cooler under the spindly tree with the heat rising from the hard sandy shoulder of the road. Her father was bent over the engine of the car, with the bonnet up. He stepped back, wiped his glasses with a handkerchief that he then shoved back in his pocket, before he lent forward again to inspect the engine. Her mother paced up and down smoking. Bella lay on the back seat of the car with both doors open, fanning herself. Harold closed the bonnet. “Let’s get going.” There were words between her parents before they got into the car, but Poppy couldn’t catch them, just the edge in Felicity’s voice and the sigh in Harold’s response. They had already been on the road for a few hours, the car was filled with the remains of the rooms that had not been packed in the van. Poppy’s knees had turned red from the sun, and there were fine scratches on the side of her thigh from the wicker basket on the seat between her and Bella that her sister, trying to gain more space for herself, kept pushing closer to her. It was packed with the photo album, their mother’s jewellery box and four small framed paintings carefully wrapped in fabric.
Lay still
(2020) Scordis, Panayotis
She walked to the hospital. When she got there, she was shown a room and told to wait. The floor was dirty. The only bed in the room was already occupied by a man who was coughing when he wasn’t moaning. He was shaking with the effort of trying to fight some kind of infection. Another man was sitting in the corner, sweating from the heat, his shirt wrapped around his head. He looked up at her when she came in, his eyes drifting over her. He pinched his lips with his fingers. His nails were dirty; his hands were calloused and riddled with veins. She found a spot on the dusty floor where she could lean her back against the wall, spread her feet out. Her belly was full and tight and bloated, the baby inside kicking. The sun dropped but the heat rose. She felt pressure now. The pain had started too. No one had come to check on her yet. The man in the corner had fallen asleep with his shirt still wrapped around his head; he was using it as a pillow. The man on the bed was still moaning, still coughing.
Media framing: how the South African media framed the country’s participation in the United Nations Security Council between 2019 and 2020
(2023) Ngcobo, Mabutho M.
This study investigates how the South African media framed the country's participation in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), during its third term, as a non-permanent member from 2019 to 2020. There was substantial negative media coverage by both the South African and international media on the country’s human rights stance in the UNSC, during its first term as the UNSC non-permanent member from 2007 to 2008 under the administration of former President Thabo Mbeki, and again during the second term from 2011 to 2012 under former President Jacob Zuma’s administration. South Africa was accused of discarding the human rights pillar of its foreign policy when it voted against the resolutions that condemned human rights violations in Zimbabwe, Myanmar and Syria. When Cyril Ramaphosa took over as head of the ANC in 2018, he stated his intention to realign the country’s foreign policy agenda with the government’s commitment to human rights. However, no study has yet assessed the extent to which the media coverage of the government’s performance at the UNSC under Ramaphosa’s presidency was any different to the coverage of its first two terms at the UNSC. This study used media framing analysis in eighty-two articles that were identified in seven online South African publications about the country's participation in the UNSC from June 2018 to December 2020. Self-structured open-ended interviews with three online publications were also conducted. The study finds that the four dominant themes identified in the media coverage – peace and security, human rights, African agenda, UNSC reforms and multilateralism – aligned with the government’s priorities. It further goes on to suggest that the media framed South Africa’s performance sympathetically, rather than contesting its public diplomacy narrative. It did this through relying on government sources in news articles, and by there being little contestation in perspectives among frame sponsors. There was no overall evaluation from the media on whether the government had recommitted to its human rights pillar of it foreign policy as it had stated it would do at the start of the Ramaphosa presidency. This study therefore tentatively suggests that overall, the media reporting on South Africa’s performance in the UNSC was sympathetic towards the government.
Misery merchants: a creative non-fiction on a private prison in South Africa
(2019-07) Hopkins, Ruth
I visited management prison for the first time in 2012, when I was following up on letters that inmates had sent to the Wits Justice Project (WJP), the organization I worked for. I returned to Mangaung prison many times and interviewed inmates, warders and several other sources. I accessed damming government reports that I had been stuffed under the carpet and leaked video footage of abuse. Mangaung Prison is a Public Private Partnership (PPP). A consortium of five shareholders signed a contract with the government in 2000 to build, run and maintain a private prison. The evidence I gathered showed the prison's riot team-also known as the "Ninjas" - taking inmates to either the hospital or the the isolation unit, where there are CCTV blind spots. There they would shock them with their electrified shock shields. Inmates were also being injected against their will with anti-psychotic drugs, often when they had no history of mental illness. The warders went on several strikes in August September 2023 and the chaos in the prison escalated to unknown heights. When the prison appointed unqualified staff to replace the absent workers, the state stepped in and took over.
Paradoxes of female affirmation: curing the mental illness of the modern Indian woman in Dear Zindagi
(2023) Suliman, Faatima
In examining the Bollywood film Dear Zindagi this study explores the ways in which the progressive narrative of women empowerment is complicated through themes of mental illness and mental health. Furthermore, this study explores modern patriarchy as a concept used to control and manage femininity, further complicating feminist narratives. Theoretically centered within literature on feminism, Bollywood, mental illness, patriarchy, and the bildungsroman, this study examines the influence modern patriarchal narratives have on redefining feminist narratives to fit modern society and how Dear Zindagi is able to progress as a feminist narrative.
Partisan journalism: examining Fox News’coverage of Donald Trump during 2020 US Presidential elections
(2023) Vilakazi, Precious Swazi
The research probes how Fox news’ coverage of Donald Trump during the 2020 United States elections changed between the day before the calling of the elections and the day after. The study teases out how Fox ‘repositioned’ itself after calling Joe Biden the winner, while still maintaining its Republican partisanship. Using qualitative textual analysis, a thematic content analysis of news broadcast by the channel on 6 and 7 November 2020 was conducted. 16 television broadcast videos from various Fox News programmes consisting of interviews, panel discussions, a news bulletin and an editorial opinion that took place over the two days were analysed. To find the difference in their reporting, the study looked at content and stylistic themes that emerged and how they changed on both days. Research findings show that Fox had a partisan approach to news on both days by promoting propaganda and a Trump-centred political agenda in their newsroom. Despite being Republican supporters, the channel still wanted to show that they were 'good journalists' on 7 November 2020. The channel ambivalence in its reporting to maintain its support for the Republicans while acknowledging Biden's victory. From a normative approach to media, this research highlights the unethical nature of the relationship between Fox and the state in journalistic terms. The study emphasises the kind of reporting that promotes personal politics instead of being an independent voice, which does not satisfy the demands of journalistic norms.
Perception vs reality: how first-hand experience during the Covid-19 pandemic has influenced spoken-language conference interpreters’ attitudes towards Remote Simultaneous Interpreting in Africa
(2023) van Niekerk, Leonor da Conceição
This study investigates how spoken-language conference interpreters across the five regions of Africa experienced Remote Simultaneous Interpreting (RSI) during the Covid-19 pandemic, how their experiences influenced their previous perceptions of RSI, as well as their perceptions of RSI’s future viability on the African continent. The study found that the online meeting platform mostly used in Africa (Zoom) functioned adequately for interpreting, but that additional functions could significantly aid interpreting. Furthermore, it was found that the effectiveness of Simultaneous Interpreting Delivery Platforms (SIDPs) and Zoom depended largely on external factors such as internet connection, bandwidth, power supply, and the behaviour of speakers and participants during meetings. Despite the challenges, the majority of the 140 questionnaire respondents believed that RSI would continue to be used after the Covid-19 pandemic. From the respondents’ perspective, RSI’s greatest advantage was that interpreters could work from the comfort of home, thereby eliminating difficulties and stress associated with travel across the African continent. RSI’s greatest disadvantage was found to be poor sound quality that is common as a result of the use of inadequate sound equipment and the inappropriate behaviour of participants in virtual meetings. Before the pandemic, most (80%) of the interpreters who participated in this study had had no first-hand RSI experience; and over half (63%) were either ambivalent or had negative perceptions about RSI. By November 2022, only 0.7% of the interpreters who participated in this research study were completely averse to the idea of providing RSI; 77% indicated that they would be happy providing a combination of in-person interpreting and RSI; 53.6% indicated that they were very happy providing home-based RSI, and 9.3%, stated that they would be happy to provide home-based RSI exclusively. Regarding interpretation hubs, only 24.3% indicated that they would prefer to provide RSI from a hub with technician support. This study concludes that the first-hand experiences of most surveyed interpreters using RSI in Africa during the Covid-19 pandemic positively influenced their perceptions of and attitudes toward RSI despite the negative aspects of technostress, disconnectedness from booth partners and clients, and poor sound quality.
Prepare for take-off: proposing a functionalist, genre-based guideline for legal and institutional translators
(2023) Wessels, Ineke
There are numerous tools available for legal translators to help them navigate a job's difficulties that simultaneously demand knowledge and expertise in Comparative Law, Translation, and Linguistics. Additionally, the growing trend toward greater interdisciplinarity in Translation Studies (TS) has provided an array of new tools available to aid the translator, primarily due to technological advancements in Computer-Aided Translation tools (CAT tools) over the last few decades. Despite the relative infancy of some of these resources, the extent of their usefulness reaches the highest levels of specialised language, as is the case of highly technical legal translators working in aeronautical law and other specialised fields of legal translation. Moreover, recent studies have shown that resource-related issues, such as a lack of awareness and the mismanagement of digital resources, are unnecessary obstacles for legal translators. The literature review confirms this praxis-related shortcoming, revealing that translators could rapidly employ strategies to overcome salient problems when translating legal texts. Additionally, several studies point to novel technologies, especially digitised corpora, as presenting new avenues of research and as a mode of dealing with translation problems. Thus, the Research Paper aims to answer calls by scholars of Legal- and Corpus-Based and CorpusAssisted Legal Translation Studies (LTS and CBLTS/CALTS) for further investigation into the best accessible approaches and digital resources available to legal-technical translators who lack the ideal expertise. The results indicate that popular Corpus Linguistics software can have numerous helpful applications for the cohort group, especially in specialised legal sub-genres and their corresponding Units of Specialised Meaning (USMs) tasks.
‘Tani?’
(2023) Onabanjo, Oluseyi Olatunde
My ears were itching again. Sleep pulled away like a receding tide, and the prickly feeling spread, till it covered me like beach sand. “Oluroumbi, oh, Joun joun, Iroko joun joun.” I pawed at my right ear to keep the singing at bay and ground the other into the sofa. It soon made sense to stop smashing the stained microsuede. I had released locked-in odors — mature farts, congealed sweat, and the leftovers from errant fuckery. I rolled onto my back, sniffed at the still air, and wiggled relief into the spot between my shoulder blades.
Tatort Südafrika: Zu Raumkonstellationen in ausgewählten Kriminalromanen von Max Annas und Deon Meyer. Ein Beitrag zur curricularen Transformation für Deutsch im südafrikanischen Hochschulkontext
(2023) Crous, Mikhaila
Space has always been a topical issue in South African history, highlighted again in the student protests of 2015/16 with calls for the space of Higher Education to be “decolonised”. Although democracy was established in 1994, the upheaval made clear that the post-apartheid space had not yet sufficiently changed and, in the case of South African universities, the curriculum was identified as an aspect in need of ‘decolonisation’. Within this context, it becomes clear that German Studies not only needs to situate itself in debates on curricular transformation, but also within the multilingual educational landscape. Although Germany was never a colonial power in South Africa and German is mentioned as a minority language in the democratic Constitution (1996), the role that the subject can play in the democratic (knowledge) project needs to be further investigated. The following thesis draws on Jonathan Jansen’s (2017:162) conception of decolonisation as “encounters with entangled knowledges” as it corresponds to the constitutional values on which the post-apartheid space and society are built. It is argued that crime fiction set in South Africa engages with “entangled knowledges” thereby showing a relevance to the lived realities of German Studies students at South African universities. Crime fiction is an adaptable genre with the ability to perceive social tensions and thereby offering a window onto society. The thesis focuses on analysing four novels which can be classified as “Afrika-Krimis” and present different representations of the post-apartheid society by two authors, one from the Global North and one from the Global South: The Farm (2014) and The Wall (2016) by Max Annas, and Heart of the Hunter (2002) and Blood Safari (2007) by Deon Meyer. Annas’ novels respectively depict a microcosm of South African society in the Eastern Cape; in contrast, Meyer’s novels have multiple locales across the country. The novels are analysed through an entangled conception of space based on Henri Lefebvre’s (1991:26) understanding that “(social) space is a (social) product” in conjunction with Sarah Nuttall’s (2009:1) notion of entanglement. It is shown that South Africa is a highly complex and entangled space where neither crime scenes are always logical, crimes are neatly solved nor history can be ignored. Both the concepts of democracy and decolonisation can be considered as open-ended constructs that require on-going critical engagement.
Techno-affective elections and (Il)legitimate power: WhatsApp voice in Kenya’s electoral deliberations
(2022-12) Allan, Wefwafwa Job
This thesis is about the concept of WhatsApp voice and its use in African electoral contexts. It devised a three-pillar framework comprising techno-pessimism, techno-optimism, and techno pragmatism, and triangulated it with the qualitative network analysis. It used the case of Bungoma County to generalise African use of digital technologies in electioneering deliberations. The study sought to determine how and why the use of WhatsApp voice enabled and/or limited people’s deliberations during the 2017 elections; with view to project how 2022 elections might pan out. Its significance was to explore the people’s unique WhatsApp use; to popularise the less emphasized techno-pragmatic perception; so as to add knowledge in the field where social media is rapidly changing the digital media landscpate; and to predict how the 2022 elections may pan out. The study was guided by the question: What factors inform WhatsApp pessimistic, optimistic, and/or pragmatic perceptions during electoral deliberations? Debate on power, perception, and techno-affect threaded the work, advancing the discussion towards addressing philosophical considerations. It engaged the concept of illegitimate and legitimate power created through “mere” voting and deliberative voting; that does not change and/or change the power balance between the people and representatives; and how WhatsApp use perpetrates illegitimate and/or legitimate power by enabling affective and/or deliberative politics. The coalesced Kenyan media milestones assess how it has gained and lost credibility over time; with view to place the WhatsApp voice within historical contexts. The study’s findings reveal how the people’s unique cultural interaction with WhatsApp technology intertwines with the dominant social actors’ influence, shaping how and why the platform is perceived as techno-pessimistic, techno-optimistic and/or techno pragmatic. The study’s prediction about the 2022 elections came to pass, with measure of accurac

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