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Women of Marikana in the Media: Decolonial Analysis of Gendered Representations

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Women's Political Communication in Africa

Part of the book series: Contributions to Political Science ((CPS))

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Abstract

In 2012, the local media in South Africa including international journalists flooded the public with images and audio-visual footage of a protracted strike in the platinum mining sector in the North West Province of South Africa. The media coverage of the Marikana phenomenon was largely patriarchal and was characterized by coloniality of power and being. This chapter offers a decolonial gendered analysis of media framing of Marikana focusing on the 1st of January 2012 until the 31st of December 2012. The most significant aspects of the dates are that they represent the year of the massacre and the commencement of the commission which was initially thought to only take four months but ended in 2014, two years later. In the study, newspaper articles were selected through purposive sampling and the methodological approach was a mixed method.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

    Dikeledi A. Mokoena

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  1. Dikeledi A. Mokoena
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Correspondence to Dikeledi A. Mokoena .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Women’s Research and Documentation Center, Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria

    Sharon Adetutu Omotoso

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Mokoena, D.A. (2020). Women of Marikana in the Media: Decolonial Analysis of Gendered Representations. In: Omotoso, S. (eds) Women's Political Communication in Africa. Contributions to Political Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42827-3_3

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