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Dissertation submitted in partial compliance with the requirements for the Master's Degree in Technology: Fine Art(Printmaking), Technikon Natal, 2000. / This dissertation is concerned with the effects of censorship on the arts community during the apartheid era in South Africa, and in the post apartheid era that followed. Through interviews and various sources, a picture will be presented that examines the contrasts and similarities of the two eras. Chapter One will present an overview of South African history, from its beginnings in 1653 to the first popular election in 1994. It will show how the religious beliefs and accompanying attitudes of the in-coming colonialists created a social atmosphere in which the system of apartheid was able to flourish and grow. It will also show how apartheid ultimately crumbled under pressure from growing resistance and violence among the people it sought to control. Chapter Two is comprised primarily of the results of several interviews with selected artists, showing how the various individuals thought about censorship, how they dealt with all the restrictive laws, and how they were able to pursue their art making under these conditions. Personal experiences illuminate the effects of such censorship, and opinions about the value and necessity of censorship are summarized. Various of the interviewees talk specifically about what actions they took under the apartheid regime, and how they viewed, and continue to view, the role of the artist in society. Chapter Three uses several case studies to illustrate what is currently happening concerning censorship and art in the post-apartheid era. Opinions and reactions to current conditions will be presented, and specific instances of censorship or attempted censorship will offer a comparison with the previous era. This will illustrate how much liberty artists today enjoy in South Africa. Several significant issues are raised by such examples; Issues of potency and importance to any culture. Finally, the artists themselves look ahead, and provide a picture of the future for arts in this society . / M

During the Angolan War of 1975-6, whilst South African troops were actively engaged on the side of the Unita/FNLA alliance, news media in South Africa were prohibited from disclosing information about the country's role in the war. Under Section 118 of the Defence Amendment Act of 1967, no information about SA troop movements or plans could be published without the permission of the Minister of Defence or his nominees. This case study shows how the Government used the Defence Act to censor certain news while releasing other news which suited its political outlook and objectives. The study documents the history of the Defence Act and of the military-press liaison machinery which grew out of it. The introduction defines propaganda as a technique of ideological control designed to supplement the control of society by means of repression. The study sets in context the Government's propaganda strategy before, during and after the Angolan War, arguing that the structures of white domination, including the newspaper industry, are being drawn into the Government's scheme of total co-ordination to fight a total war.

The censorship of popular music in South Africa during the 1980s severely affected South African musicians. The apartheid government was directly involved in centralized state censorship by means of the Directorate of Publications, while the South African Broadcasting Corporation exercised government censorship at the level of airplay. Others who assisted state censorship included religious and cultural interest groups. State censorship in turn put pressure on record companies, musicians and others to practice self-censorship. Many musicians who overtly sang about taboo topics or who used controversial language subsequently experienced censorship in different forms, including police harassment. Musicians were also subject to anti-apartheid forms of censorship,such as the United Nations endorsed cultural boycott. Not all instances of censorship were overtly political, but they were always framed by, and took place within, a repressive legal-political system. This thesis found that despite the state's attempt to maintain its hegemony, musicians sought ways of overcoming censorship practices. It is argued that the ensuing struggle cannot be conceived of in simple binary terms. The works of Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, in particular, are applied to the South African context in exploring the localized nuances of the cultural struggle over music censorship. It is argued that fragmented resistance to censorship arose out of the very censorship structures that attempted to silence musicians. Textual analysis brought to light that resistance took various forms including songs with provocative lyrics and titles, and more subtle means of bypassing censorship, including the use of symbolism, camouflaged lyrics, satire and crossover performance. Musicians were faced with the challenge of bypassing censors yet nevertheless conveying their message to an audience. The most successful cases negotiated censorial practices while getting an apparent message across to a wide audience. Broader forms of resistance were also explored, including opposition through live performance, counter-hegemonic information on record covers, resistance from exile, alignment with political organizations and legal challenges to state censorship. In addition, some record companies developed strategies of resistance to censorship. The many innovative practices outlined in this thesis demonstrate that even in the context of constraint, resistance is possible. Despite censorship, South African musicians were able to express themselves through approaching their music in an innovative way.

No abstract available. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1989.

Thesis (MPhil)-- Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Pornography in South Africa has only been legal for a mere 16 years, but is preceded by a 126-year history of inutile South African government attempts to suppress and curb it at its borders. To date, pornography as a research field has been largely overlooked by South African researchers, who have either mostly opted to choose fields that are socially more acceptable, or assumed that pornography was not present in the country before the 1980s and 1990s. This research, however, prefers to differ. The study investigates a minute part of a broader scope of pornography history in South Africa, by studying what international and domestic pornographic magazines were first seized and thereafter banned in the country between 1939 and 1989. By theoretically implementing an authoritative theoretical framework, the Annales’s functional structural approach, and applying the historical methodology to unearth unobtrusive historical data, the study compiles a narrative of events that ties a 50-year history of the pornographic magazine in South Africa together. The study eventually identifies 1 033 individual volumes, editions and issues of various pornographic magazine genres, including, among others, pulp and pin-up, naturist and nudist, soft-core, hard-core, male and female homosexual, bisexual, bondage, Asian, female impersonation and biker magazines, of which some, of course, are local South African pornographic magazines. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Pornografie is nog net 16 jaar wettig in Suid-Afrika en word voorafgegaan deur ’n geskiedenis van 126 jaar se sensuur wat deur die regering afgekondig is om pornografie buite die land se grense te hou. Tot op hede is pornografie as ’n navorsingsveld deur Suid-Afrikaanse navorsers oorgesien omdat hulle óf studies aanpak wat sosiaal meer aanvaarbaar is, óf aanneem dat daar voor die 1980’s en 1990’s geen pornografie in die land was nie. In dié verband wil hierdie studie met dié aannames verskil. Die navorsing ondersoek ’n klein deeltjie van ’n groter geskiedenis van pornografie in Suid-Afrika deur te kyk na watter buitelandse en binnelandse pornografiese tydskrifte tussen 1939 en 1989 in die land gevind en kort daarna verban is. Teoreties is die outoritêre en die Annales se funksionalisties-strukturalistiese raamwerk ingespan, en die historiese metodologie is gebruik om historiese data na te vors om ’n narratief saam te stel wat 50 jaar se pornografiese tydskrifte in Suid-Afrika saamsnoer. Die studie identifiseer uiteindelik 1 033 uitgawes van verskeie porno-grafiese tydskrifte, wat, onder meer, pulp- en prikkelpop-, nudistiese, sagte, harde, manlike en vroulike homoseksuele, biseksuele, knegskap-, Asiër-, fopdosser- en motorfietstydskrifte insluit; sommige van dié genres is, natuurlik, ook plaaslik in Suid-Afrika gepubliseer.

During the 1970s the plays of Pieter-Dirk Uys became causes celebres. In the 1980s he was, commercially and artistically, arguably the most successful South African satirist. By 1990 he had gained recognition in the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Germany. Yet relatively little research has been undertaken or published which evaluates his contribution to South African theatre as a playwright and performer of political satire. This dissertation aims to document and assess the satiric work of Uys and that of his precursors and contemporaries. The first chapter identifies certain characteristic features and purposes of satire as a creative method which cannot be defined in purely literary terms. The views of local practitioners and references to its manifestation in various non-literary and indigenous forms are included to support the descriptive approach to satire in performance adopted in later chapters. Of necessity to a study of Uys's lampoons, Chapter 2 discusses the origins of lampoon and the theatrical presentation of actual persons by Aristophanes (the first extant Western playwright to do so). Both the textual and visual ridicule of Socrates, Euripides, Cleon and Lamachus are considered, to argue that Aristophanes employed the nominal character as a factional type to exemplify a concept for humorous rather than meliorative purposes. Part One of Chapter 3 is a necessarily selective survey of the diversity, style and censorship of satire in South Africa in various theatrical, literary and journalistic forms. Part Two describes the use of satire by Adam Leslie, Jeremy Taylor, Robert Kirby and, more recently, Paul Slabolepszy, Mark Banks, Ian Fraser, Eric Miyeni and the 'alternative' Afrikaners in plays and in revue, cabaret and stand-up comedy. Chapter 4 examines the principal themes of Uys's plays to date, the 1981-1992 revues as entertainment and as a reflection of certain social and political issues, the similarities between his theatrical praxis and that of Aristophanes, and his satiric strategies in performance: his preparatory and visual signifiers, his concern with proxemics, and his mastery of kinesics, paralanguage and chronemics in depicting a spectrum of fictional and non-fictional personae, including Evita Bezuidenhout, P.W. Botha and the Uys-persona. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1993.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In this study I analyse the first year of publication of Loslyf, the first and, at the time of its launch in June 1995, only Afrikaans pornographic magazine. The analysis comprises a historical account of its inception as relayed mainly by Ryk Hattingh, the first editor of Loslyf and primary creative force behind the publication. Such an investigation offers valuable insights into an aspect of South African media history as yet undocumented. As a powerful contributor to an Afrikaans imaginary, emerging at a time of political renewal, Loslyf provides a glimpse into the desires, tensions and tastes of and for an imagined community potentially still shaped by a censorial past. The magazine is worth studying, in part, as an example of an attempt at reinvesting the prescriptive and seemingly generic genre of pornography with cultural specificity and political content, with a view to making it more interesting and relevant. The study argues that whilst Loslyf succeeded in fracturing the “simulacrum” (Baudrillard 1990: 35) of pornographic representation, it also demonstrated that this kind of „alternativity‟ is difficult to sustain. An analysis of the written and visual content of the first 12 issues of the magazine, under Hattingh‟s editorship, investigates the basis of Loslyf‟s status as „alternative‟ publication. I conclude that the first year of Loslyf contributed towards the broader project of democratic expression in an expanding South African visual economy, as a simultaneously well considered and underrated (at the time of its publication at least) cultural product. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: In hierdie studie analiseer ek die eerste jaar van publikasie van Loslyf as 'n baanbrekende en, in die tyd van sy ontstaan in Junie 1995, die enigste Afrikaanse pornografiese tydskrif. Hierdie analise behels ʼn historiese oorsig van die ontstaan van Loslyf soos hoofsaaklik verhaal deur Ryk Hattingh, die eerste redakteur van Loslyf en primêre kreatiewe mag agter die publikasie. So ʼn ondersoek bied waardevolle insig tot ʼn ongedokumenteerde aspek van Suid-Afrikaanse mediageskiedenis. As ʼn kultuurproduk wat ʼn kragtige bydrae gelewer het tot die Afrikaanse samelewing in ʼn tyd van politieke hernuwing, bied Loslyf ʼn weerkaatsing van die begeertes, spanninge en smake vir en van hierdie gemeenskap – begeertes en smake wat grootendeels gevorm is deur ʼn geskiedenis van sensuur. Dit is waardevol om die tydskrif te bestudeer as voorbeeld van 'n poging om die voorskriftelike en skynbaar generiese pornografiese genre met kulturele bepaaldheid en politiese inhoud te herbelê, ten einde hierdie genre meer interessant en relevant te maak. Hierdie studie beweer dat, terwyl Loslyf daarin slaag om die “simulakrum” (Baudrillard 1990: 35) van pornografiese voorstelling te breek, die publikasie ook demonstreer dat hierdie tipe „alternatiwiteit‟ moeilik volhoubaar is. ʼn Analise van die geskrewe en visuele inhoud van die eerste 12 uitgawes van die tydskrif, onder redakteurskap van Hattingh, ondersoek die basis van Loslyf se status as „alternatiewe‟ publikasie. Ek beslis dat Loslyf se eerste jaar bygedra het tot die breër inisiatief van demokratiese uitdrukking in ʼn ontwikkelende Suid- Afrikaanse visuele ekonomie, as gelyktydig goed deurdagte én ondergeskatte (veral ten tyde van sy ontstaan) publikasie.

This dissertation seeks to explore how the exercise of political power and the music industry impacted each other in South Africa under apartheid during the 1980s. It does so by looking firstly at the ways in which the South African government used music to promote apartheid. Secondly, it looks at the role of South African popular musicians in the struggle against apartheid in the country, specifically their role in civil society and the methods they employed to fight apartheid while avoiding censorship. It looks at key musical developments of the decade and explores their political implications, focusing on three popular genres: bubblegum (or disco), crossover and reggae. Thirdly, it explores the role of South African music and musicians in the struggle against apartheid outside South Africa. Finally, it looks at the role of music in the international anti-apartheid movement and the contribution of the international music community to the struggle. / Political Sciences / M.A. (African Politics)

This dissertation seeks to explore how the exercise of political power and the music industry impacted each other in South Africa under apartheid during the 1980s. It does so by looking firstly at the ways in which the South African government used music to promote apartheid. Secondly, it looks at the role of South African popular musicians in the struggle against apartheid in the country, specifically their role in civil society and the methods they employed to fight apartheid while avoiding censorship. It looks at key musical developments of the decade and explores their political implications, focusing on three popular genres: bubblegum (or disco), crossover and reggae. Thirdly, it explores the role of South African music and musicians in the struggle against apartheid outside South Africa. Finally, it looks at the role of music in the international anti-apartheid movement and the contribution of the international music community to the struggle. / Political Sciences / M.A. (African Politics)