Of conspiracies and kangas: Mail & Guardian Online’s construction of the Jacob Zuma rape trial

Abstract

This textual analysis considers how one of South Africa’s elite news media constructed the rape trial of Jacob Zuma, the nation’s former deputy president, who was charged with raping an HIV-positive family friend. The Mail & Guardian Online ’s representation of the case engaged with some of South Africa’s most pressing issues during 2005—2006: political succession, women’s status, treatment of rape accusers, cultural attitudes towards sexuality, and soaring rates of rape and HIV/AIDS prevalence. I argue that the M&G Online constructed the rape trial in ways that prioritized party politics over gender politics by foregrounding contemporary discourses related to political power, rape myths, class and ethnic division, and the role of the press in 21st-century South Africa. Ultimately, I suggest that such representation served the M&G Online’s interest in attracting the readers its advertisers sought most: the liberal-minded middle class, a group generally frustrated with its political options.

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