MFBooks Joburg - an imprint of Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd -- verso of title page.

In mid-1990s South Africa, apartheid ended, Nelson Mandela was elected president, and the country’s urban black youth developed kwaito—a form of electronic music (redolent of North American house) that came to represent the post-struggle generation. In this book, Gavin Steingo examines kwaito as it has developed alongside the democratization of South Africa over the past two decades. Tracking the fall of South African hope into the disenchantment that often characterizes the outlook of its youth today—who face high unemployment, extreme inequality, and widespread crime—Steingo looks to kwaito as a powerful tool that paradoxically engages South Africa’s crucial social and political problems by, in fact, seeming to ignore them. Politicians and cultural critics have long criticized kwaito for failing to provide any meaningful contribution to a society that desperately needs direction. As Steingo shows, however, these criticisms are built on problematic assumptions about the political function of music. Interacting with kwaito artists and fans, he shows that youth aren’t escaping their social condition through kwaito but rather using it to expand their sensory realities and generate new possibilities. Resisting the truism that “music is always political,” Steingo elucidates a music that thrives on its radically ambiguous relationship with politics, power, and the state.

Crossing the Bridge of the Digital Divide: A Walk with Global Leaders explores the combined effect of the rapid growth of information as an increasingly fragmented information base, a large component of which is available only to people with money and/or acceptable institutional affiliations. In the recent past, the outcome of these challenges has been characterized as the "digital divide" between the information “haves” and “have nots” along racial and socio economic lines that seem to widen as time passes. To address the issues of digital equity and digital inequality in an effort to bridge the digital divide, educational scholars, researchers and practitioners are in positions to ensure equitable opportunities are made available for people of all ages, races, ability, sexual orientation, and ethnicity in support of social justice for bridging the digital divide. The digital divide addresses issues concerning equal opportunity, equity and access that have an effect on the development of marginalized and otherwise disenfranchised populations within and across systems nationally and internationally. The contributing authors- representing Unites States, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and the UK - posit that education institutions can serve as the bridge to close the digital divide for students who do not have access to information technology in their homes. At a time when more computers are made available in schools than ever before, the digital divide continues to widen and fewer people in the lowest SES groups are given the opportunity to join the world of computer technology and the internet. As a result, the influence of leadership activity on institutional racism, gender discrimination, inequality of opportunity, inequity of educational processes, digital exclusion, and justice have gained currency and attention. The contributing national and international authors examine the digital divide in terms of social justice leadership, equity and access. It is within this context that the authors offer discussions from a lens of their choice, i.e. conceptual, review of literature, epistemological, etc. By adopting an educational approach to bridging the digital divide, researchers and practitioners can connect and extend long established lines of conceptual and empirical inquiry aimed at improving organizational practices and thereby gain insights that might be otherwise overlooked, or assumed. This holds great promise for generating, refining, and testing theories of leadership for equity and access, and helps strengthen already vibrant lines of inquiry on social justice.

In a city that has lost its shimmer, Lindanathi and his two friends Ruan and Cecelia sell illegal pharmaceuticals while chasing their next high. Lindanathi, deeply troubled by his hand in his brother’s death, has turned his back on his family, until a message from home reminds him of a promise he made years before. When a puzzling masked man enters their lives, Lindanathi is faced with a decision: continue his life in Cape Town, or return to his family and to all he has left behind. Rendered in lyrical, bright prose and set in a not-so-new South Africa, The Reactive is a poignant, life-affirming story about secrets, memory, chemical abuse and family, and the redemption that comes from facing what haunts us most.

From campus radio to host of South Africa's biggest youth breakfast show to pioneering his own online hub, Gareth Cliff has always claimed the headlines with his brand of strong opinion and whiplash wit. He has been suspended from the airwaves or crucified by his critics more times than he can remember – whether for interviewing himself as Jesus or comparing Shaka Zulu to Cecil John Rhodes. Most recently, Cliff was fired by M-Net as one of the Idols judges after facing accusations of racism over the Penny Sparrow incident. He fought back, employing the services of the EFF's Dali Mpofu, and was reinstated. In Cliffhanger, South Africa's controversial shock jock goes behind the scenes to give you a first-hand account of the highs and lows of the past two decades.

Issues for Nov. 1957- include section: Accessions. Aanwinste, Sept. 1957-

In Kwaito Bodies Xavier Livermon examines the cultural politics of the youthful black body in South Africa through the performance, representation, and consumption of kwaito, a style of electronic dance music that emerged following the end of apartheid. Drawing on fieldwork in Johannesburg's nightclubs and analyses of musical performances and recordings, Livermon applies a black queer and black feminist studies framework to kwaito. He shows how kwaito culture operates as an alternative politics that challenges the dominant constructions of gender and sexuality. Artists such as Lebo Mathosa and Mandoza rescripted notions of acceptable femininity and masculinity, while groups like Boom Shaka enunciated an Afrodiasporic politics. In these ways, kwaito culture recontextualizes practices and notions of freedom within the social constraints that the legacies of colonialism, apartheid, and economic inequality place on young South Africans. At the same time, kwaito speaks to the ways in which these legacies reverberate between cosmopolitan Johannesburg and the diaspora. In foregrounding this dynamic, Livermon demonstrates that kwaito culture operates as a site for understanding the triumphs, challenges, and politics of post-apartheid South Africa.

This book explores how television in the global South is ‘future-proofing’ its continued relevance, addressing its commercial, social and political viability in a constantly changing information ecosystem. The chapter contributions in the book are drawn from countries in East, South and West Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, specially selected for their illustrative potential of the key issues addressed in the book. Scholarly attention on television in the global South has largely been limited to studying evolving television formats with broader structural issues covered almost entirely by industry reports. Major gaps remain in terms of understanding how television in the global South is changing within the context of the significant technological developments and what this means for television’s future(s). The chapters reflect on these futures, not in the sense of predicting what these might be, but rather anticipating important areas of intellection. The contributors contend that much of the scholarship on the global South, by scholars from the South, is often stilted by a reluctance to anticipate. This failure leads to a largely reactionary scholarship, constantly oppositional, and unable to recentre conversations on the South. This volume finds intellectual incentive in this urgent need to anticipate, hence its particular focus on television futures. Taking television in the global South as an important cultural and political barometer, the book seeks to explore how television in the global South is adapting to the rampant technological changes and processes of globalisation.