In 1994 a brutal genocide took place in Rwanda were one part of the population killed over 800 000 of their own people over a period of one hundred days. Rwandan radio, the biggest and most influential medium in the country, played a crucial part in the tragedy and today, almost 22 years after the genocide, Rwanda is trying to rebuild the media system as well as the trust between the public and the journalists. Over recent years Rwanda has made a huge development within the media sector and keeps moving forward from its dark history. This study aims to examine how radio journalist at the government owned radio channel RBA, Rwanda Broadcasting Agency, experiences the changes in the media climate and focus will mainly lie on the period after the introduction of new media laws in 2013. This study also examines how journalists have experienced different international collaborations, especially between Western countries and Rwanda, that are aiming to develop the media system. In total eleven radio journalist from RBA were interviewed and our research questions were as follows; How do Rwandan radio journalists within the RBA experience the media situation in the country today? How do Rwandan radio journalists within the RBA regard their role within their profession? How can Rwanda’s media climate be interpreted through different normative media systems? To understand the media climate at RBA three theoretical perspectives were used as a base; Agenda Setting Theory, globalisation and domestication. To study the media situation an ethnographic method was applied and put into the context of Rwanda's history and culture. During our interviews we have talked about how the journalists regard their role in the society, how it has changed, what may still change, how they value their independency as journalists and what they think the future holds for Rwandan media development. The informants all agreed that Rwandan journalism is constantly developing and journalists are learning how to work in a society where the media's biggest aim is to be trusted by the public. Rwandan journalists and international journalists, the latter group also partly represented in the study, regard Rwanda's media situation differently but both parts agree upon the fact that the country has a long way to go to reach an open media climate. Our result leads up to a cultural conclusion; it is difficult to make a fair judgement of the media situation in Rwanda only by measuring the country's development and the journalistic competence according to Western ideals.

Student Number: 0307561M Master of Arts School of Literature and Language Studies Faculty of Humanities / In this study I will interrogate some of the issues and contradictions raised by Alexander McCall Smith’s Botswana novels. These texts feature a black African woman protagonist in a developing society, and have achieved huge popular and commercial success, but they are written by a white European man. I will examine briefly whether the books can be considered as ‘African Literature,’ and how the author has negotiated the interface between history and literature to convince readers and critics in ‘the West’ that he is portraying ‘the real Africa.’ I will investigate the strategies used by the author to create this ‘authentic’, ‘traditional’ effect, how he writes convincingly as, about and on behalf of women, and the use he makes of the detective fiction mode. Ultimately I will consider whether these novels represent a restorative ‘writing back’ or whether they constitute a continuing appropriation of African history, culture and identity, a further re-invention of Africa by and for ‘the West’.

In this study the role of the educational publisher as an information intermediary is considered. The focus is on the developmental role of the publisher, against the background of the information age the world is entering today. The publishing industry is regarded as both a vehicle for and the product of development, which entails a twofold responsibility: the development of society in general and the development of the industry in particular. This study highlights the role of the publisher in the development of society, and it is argued that the recent changes in the education system and the language policy potentially offer a great challenge to educational publishers in South Africa to help create suitable educational material in order to facilitate the successful implementation of the new curriculum, thereby contributing to the development of South African society as a whole. However, developments since 1994, when the new political dispensation came into effect, have practically halted the development input of publishers in the new education system and created a severe crisis for the educational publishing industry. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Information Science / unrestricted