Some Random Thoughts on the South African Communication Association

ABSTRACT

This autoethnography concludes the author’s trilogy on the history of the South African Communication Association (SACOMM) in this 40th anniversary issue of African Journalism Studies, previously titled as Ecquid Novi, a key player since 1981 within the Association. The author discusses paradigmatic contestations and associated administrative arrangements within SACOMM as indicators of post 2000 university managerialism and performance management, in the context of wider political processes. A discussion of naming of the Association reconsiders SACOMM’s origins and history. The successes of the Association in terms of post-apartheid national policy are examined in terms of SACOMM’s achievements and organisational assumptions. Lessons learned are related briefly to other African associations.

KEYWORDS:

• Disciplinary association
• SACOMM
• autoethnography
• post-apartheid
• scholarly community
• conference management

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Arrie de Beer for his analytical comments on an earlier draft. Thanks also to Julie Reid, Elnerine Greef and Gideon de Wet for engaging aspects of this article. I am solely responsible for the outcome.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Stellenbosch and Natal Universities were invited but did not attend.

2 See: http://www.thejournalist.org.za/the-craft/african-communication-academics-gather-in-ghana/.

3 De Beer has a different perspective, which may well have prevailed at the time: “I might be proven wrong one day, but nobody in SACOMM thought of the homelands as independent, national states that had to be catered for on a separate roster. They were part of SA, and their university members were part of SACOMM. Period. I realise how difficult it is to reconstruct history, not the least that of SACOMM” (personal communication, 5 April 2021).

4 Stewart’s premature passing in 2014 robbed us of his own story on SACOMM—one that he told as guest speaker at the 2004 conference held at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.

5 De Beer correctly questions the implication of a total ideological divide along binary lines, as if all colleagues from traditional English-language universities were anti-apartheid, and therefore all being “good”, and all colleagues from traditional Afrikaans language universities were pro-apartheid and therefore “bad”. He observes: “I knew most if not all of the SACOMM presidents, and what their departments portrayed, up to the late ’80s quite well … these presidents were neither apartheid apologists nor were their departments simmering hotbeds of apartheid.” Individuals within the departments differed in perspective. Afrikaans departments hid behind the “objective” social science approach, UNISA was probably “hiding” behind Van Schoor’s emphasis on Kierkegaard and Ortega and Potch was hiding in its Calvinistic zuil. Free State before Bok Marias was not really visible on the research front. The only problem, with hindsight, is that none of the individuals possibly ever thought they were “hiding” from taking a stance against apartheid. As a general rule, the “Afrikaans departments” were involved in “kommunikasie-wetenskap”, not in “political activism” as was found in the “traditional English departments” (Rhodes and Natal) (personal communication, 5 April 2021).