Broadcast Media Regulation and Democratic Transitions in Africa: A Nigerian and South African Case Study

This chapter explores the current practices of state-media relations in Nigeria and South Africa and the regulatory policies that govern (online) broadcasting practice in both countries, connecting this with debates on the role of the media in emerging democracies on the continent. To do this, we use policy analysis and interviews to examine the content of the regulatory documents and the perceptions that media practitioners have of them. Although we consider the media environment more broadly, our emphasis is on traditional and online broadcasting regulation as overseen by Nigeria’s National Broadcasting Commission and the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa. The analysis is interrogated using existing scholarship on critical political economy, the public interest, and state-media relations. Our findings show that the regulatory bodies in both countries largely exist as tools of state control over media expression with minor variations, creating a situation where the media functions under state intimidation, although this is more so in Nigeria. This is possible because the regulations tend to be vaguely worded with political heads enjoying broader powers that leaves regulatory bodies vulnerable to state encroachment. Beyond official regulatory instruments, we also found that media practitioners are inclined towards censoring themselves for concerns over unwritten rules, this trend is more prevalent in Nigeria than South Africa. Based on these, we argue that despite the wave of democratic transitions that swept through Africa in the 1990s, state-media relations in Nigeria and South Africa still function within a construct defined by subalternity, suggesting that what matters for traditional and online broadcast media regulation in Africa is not democracy, but the character of the political system.