Media scarcity in an age of information abundance: the case of MK veterans

Fighting apartheid

As a contrast to these important studies of ‘undocumented’ migrant communities, this paper focuses on another set of ‘media scarce’ actors, military veterans of the armed struggle against the South African Apartheid State, particularly in the period after 1979 when clandestine operations increased in front lines states and within South Africa itself.

The armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), the party famously led by Nelson Mandela, provides a unique study of a community that for security purposes lived an underground existence, and as such a media scarce life. The publication or circulation of media documentation of the armed resistance could easily lead to detection by the South African security police and likely imprisonment, or worse. Thus, unlike undocumented migrant and refugees’ communities such militants in many cases never had media documentation of important parts of their lives, leaving them now relatively ‘media scarce’ as they approach their retirement years. It therefore goes without saying that media scarcity takes different forms and is impacted by different historical trajectories around the world.

The media scarce nature of “MK” veterans – the acronym for the party’s military wing “Umkhonto we Sizwe” or “Spear of the Nation” – stands in stark contrast to the media rich and visually iconic history of Nelson Mandela (Olesen, 2015) and the ANC’s post-Apartheid visual campaign to merge its history into a future governing narrative for the country (Coombes, 2003). Indeed, the formation of the MK (1961) was itself purposefully and performatively ‘undocumented’ – after the vote was taken to initiate military operations against the South African state all evidence of the decision was “burned on the paper on which it was written” (Ellis, 2013: 17) Media scarcity, as this paper will detail, continued to be a defining feature of MK operations until the end of Apartheid and military operations. Consequently, today MK veterans, through their association, face challenges in communicating their contributions to the fight against Apartheid – in addition to having little media documentation of their role in the battle against Apartheid by the fall of 2018 the veteran’s website has gone offline after web fees had gone unpaid for months.

This paper then focuses on how MK members negotiate and rearticulate their history and contributions to the end of Apartheid with seemingly little historical media documents and objects at a time when the sharing of social media objects and documents has become a common daily practice (Jurgenson, 2019) and essential practices in contemporary political campaigns (Chadwick, 2013). In contrast to the image heavy and discrete media objects that are shared on social media platforms and throughout the media industries, this paper details how the media scarce veterans and their supporters have mobilized a performative set of media strategies and documents, principally testimonials, hand draw images, and video re-enactments, to call attention to their role in South African history, and their present day lack of rights and social services. Such examples moreover problematize the notion that media scarce actors are voiceless, while also calling into question the limits of the concepts of information abundance and the economy of attention as axiomatic, mediatized conditions of contemporary life. The focus on performative, historical documentation of MK lives, memories, and experiences, alongside the work of Schreiber, Bishop and others, thus offers an important corrective to the predominate theories of media today, where user generated and shared videos, comments and images jostle for attention and the ability to cultivate reputations.

The first section of the paper provides an expanded discussion of the information abundance and attention economy concepts in media studies, calling into question the relevance of ‘mediatization’ theories for marginalized and media scarce communities such as MK veterans. Mediatization theories argue in part that individuals and communities learn and adapt to the rules and logistics of media to have their voices heard, or themselves recognized (Lundby, 2009). The paper argues that such perspectives struggle to account for the actions and strategies of media scarce communities due to their heavy emphasis on the importance of discrete, digital objects, that effectively serve as raw materials in the socially mediated economy.

The second section of the paper provides an introduction to the history of the MK and its efforts at evading media capture by the South African police (SAP), defence force (SADF), Bureau for State Security (BOSS) and other agents of the Apartheid state. This section discusses how during the underground struggle against Apartheid the MK constructed media campaigns that also doubled as media infrastructure efforts. The paper begins, in other words, by noting that during the early days of the MK’s military campaign, media documents were obscured, hidden, and deployed as spectacular/performative events to provide important symbols of resistance. To this end, the section discusses MK led campaigns to synchronize the explosion of leaflet bombs and also to construct a network of dead letter boxes, both central infrastructural elements in the MK’s media and communications networks. Such efforts thus highlight, in historical terms, how the MK never fully embraced the visual and mediated documentation of the military struggle against Apartheid, rather they embraced an underground, media scarce, tactic that served to heighten the mythic, anonymous, yet potentially ubiquitous strength of the resistance to the South African Apartheid regime.

The last section of the paper focuses on contemporary media tactics and documents produced by and about the MK and its operatives. After establishing the distinct lack of media documentation of the history of MK fighters in the battle against Apartheid, the paper briefly discusses three common representational strategies that tell the story of MK veterans’ contribution to the Anti-Apartheid struggle. This concluding section begins with a discussion of the use of hand drawings of MK fighters and their ‘propaganda war’ infrastructure to detail the history of Umkhonto we Sizwe operations. On a broader global scale, the paper discusses the cinematic dramatization of the ANC struggle, while MK stories remained largely represented by veteran interviews and re-enactments in a select few documentary films. This section concludes with a discussion of centrality of testimonies and witnesses in the media scarce MK community.

Overall then the paper forwards a critique and corrective to attention economy, information abundance and mediatization theories, in an effort to provide a more inclusive set of frames through which media scholars can recognize, analyze, and support communities with scarce media documentation and conflicted and tense relationships within a mediatized world. Such a framework is required to displace the dominant assumption that contemporary politics in South Africa and around the world is unproblematically reserved for media abundant actors, those individuals, groups, and communities that have a rich supply of media objects to upload, share and distribute publicly.

The limits of information abundance

A core proposition in media studies today is that our media world has become saturated with content, sources, information, opinions, and new actors or so-called ‘users’. This is a near axiomatic proposition, particularly in regions and countries where major global information aggregators (think Google, and previously Yahoo), social networking sites (Facebook), legacy computer/software giants (Apple and Microsoft), e-tailers/e-commerce (alibaba, Amazon), and media streaming and production companies (Netflix, Amazon-Prime, BBC iplayer, Apple TV) dominate and proliferate access to media content and platforms. The introduction and expansion of the Web 2.0, and later social media platforms, greatly expanded the options for producing and consuming media objects and content. Media users could now post and otherwise circulate their writing, opinions, music, photos, and videos to online friends, family, and the public at large. The large-scale adoption of handheld devices that included photo, video, audio recording capabilities, and internet access, later substantially increased the amount of information and content available about our built environment, daily routines, and geographic locations. Thus began the so-called ‘economy of attention’ (Bueno, 2017; Wu, 2016) and subsequent efforts by users to learn the rules of visibility on social media platforms and interfaces, to break through all the information clutter to reach an audience. The space of user attention – the PC desktop, then later laptop, tablet, and mobile media screens – subsequently became the battleground for preferred placement in the age of information abundance (Grusin, 2000).

For our purposes here however, Yves Citton’s (2017) recently translated book The Ecology of Attention, also reminds us that attention is not only paid, owned, commercialized, or traded, it also constructs and binds together various social and individual practices, including social forms of reputation and political recognition. As a consequence, Citton suggests that an ecology of attention recognizes various practices that are so routinized or ‘internalized’ as to become ‘semi-attentive’. This is an important corrective to overly generalized, economic or quantitative perceptions of the media landscape. As we will see in the second section of the paper, the internalization of media practices, and the habitual or ‘semi-attentive’ evasion of media documentation was an important component of MK underground operations, for their every move, gesture, or word could potentially divulge and otherwise reveal their identities as revolutionaries.

Before moving on to introduce the specific media history and culture of MK veterans, let us first address one last theory of media that best encapsulates the prevailing view among media scholars that engaging in the media landscape today is a prescribed task, indeed a task that requires a set of competencies and tools (again, principally visual media objects such as photos or videos). Theories of mediatization have grown in popularity for those scholars questioning how media operates as a form of social power, that is as a prerequisite for acting in the world, politically or socially. Key mediatization theorists argue that users, groups, and societies construct their stories and campaigns from the attention economy’s shared media objects. Lundby (2009), for instance, notes that everyday life is increasingly littered with discrete moments and corresponding media objects (once again, photos, videos, etc.). Hence Lundby defines mediatization in part as a technical process, one that requires the knitting together of these discrete digital objects and moments into meaningful stories or narratives. In short, from Lundby’s perspective, the process of mediatization suggests not just a required set of competencies or knowledge of social media customs and practices, but also the need for media objects to construct a picture of a particular debate or issue. Access to a broad range of dynamic, media objects can be combined, recombined, hyperlinked, and embedded to form the basis of this granular storytelling. As a form of media power, Lundby’s arguments point to such media materials/objects as prerequisites for contemporary media participation, raising the question again of the availability of such objects, both in the contemporary setting and also in campaigns and stories that necessarily invoke complex, historical narratives and political struggles for social services and other rights.

Other proponents of the mediatization framework such as Couldry (2014) are arguably more explicit and direct in discussions of media as a system of socialized ‘prerequisite’ power and authority. Couldry argues that mediatization should be conceived as a social requirement and form of social power. Albeit with perhaps less of an emphasis on the importance placed on discrete media objects highlighted in this paper and through Lundby’s previous thoughts on the process of mediatization, Couldry suggests that acting in the world requires adapting to the conventions of media. Consequently, for Couldry cultural norms and practices are examples of how individuals and communities are ‘mediatized’, that is how they conform to the grammar of media platforms and properties. Such arguments clearly resonate with this paper’s earlier discussion of the exigencies and affordances of an economy of attention framework, where media users adopt attention seeking practices, language and posts to ‘stand out’ among the sea of other shared media objects seeking the approval (likes), reposts (RTs), and glances of users across platforms.

To summarize then, MK veterans and other media scarce or undocumented media actors now find themselves embedded in a granular media environment flush with uploaded and shared media objects. Participation in producing – and sharing – visual media is a defining characteristic of the contemporary media ecology. Social mediation among networks, friends, and acquaintances has become commonplace indeed increasingly intuitive and user friendly, facilitated by haptic and geo-locative forms of engaging with personal handheld media devices and screens (shakes, swipes, and taps). Such wholesale changes in the look, temporality, and sites/spaces of media consumption have become common practice for youth and other early adopters who in the South African context have grown up in a post-Apartheid nation. Yet such changes to the media ecology, both individually and collectively, seemingly pose distinct challenges for MK members and their political efforts, which brings us back to the central question guiding this paper: how have media scarce actors like the MK veterans, with little visual and historical images and documents of their experiences, communicated their role in the historical struggle against Apartheid? What media images or other communicative objects have been used to remind South Africans of MK veterans’ sacrifices and contributions to the end of Apartheid?

The MK and ANC

In the spring and summer of 2018, members of South Africa’s Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association (MKMVA) conducted a series of protests to call attention to their lack of housing and employment opportunities. At one such protest, veterans succeeded in occupying and ultimately closing Durban’s city hall. A local newspaper noted that ‘The protesters were in a no-nonsense mood yesterday morning and displayed open hostility to people taking pictures of them’ (Magubane, 2018). Local news reports of the protests went to great lengths to highlight how police and local government officials deferred to the MK veterans, highlighting the respect and power that Apartheid era figures still maintain in contemporary South Africa. As The Guardian recently reported, however, such deference is running up against the limits of political memories and allegiances as ‘More than 10 million eligible voters in South Africa – about a quarter of the electorate – will be under 30 and thus too young to remember the ANC’s role in the struggle against apartheid’ (Burke, 2019). Indeed following years of corruption at the top levels of disgraced President Jacob Zuma’s administration, the governing African National Congress (ANC) has begun to lose its unquestioned grip on political power, even among the majority black South African voters. Following a series of political losses in 2016 and 2017 the party’s own internal elections report noted that ‘we continue. . . to decline systematically’ and ‘going under 50% [of the vote] will soon be reality’ (Davis, 2017).

Historically Umkhonto we Sizwe has been somewhat autonomous from the main political party since its inception in 1961. This separation served a number of purposes, some political (particularly as Nelson Mandela and the ANC negotiated an end to Apartheid), but also as a means to protect the identity and security of MK members who served undercover or underground. Portions of the MK’s first manifesto make clear this opaque relationship between political organizations and parties and resistance fighters:

It is, however, well known that the main national liberation organisations in this country have consistently followed a policy of non-violence. They have conducted themselves peaceably at all times, regardless of government attacks and persecutions upon them, and despite all government-inspired attempts to provoke them to violence. They have done so because the people prefer peaceful methods of change to achieve their aspirations without the suffering and bitterness of civil war. But the people’s patience is not endless.

The time comes in the life of any nation when there remain only two choices: submit or fight. ¹

In the years following the release of Mandela in 1990 and the subsequent transformation of the ANC into the governing party of the Republic of South Africa, tensions began to mount. The MK and ANC’s ruling bodies and officials clashed on a series of internal issues, some procedural, but others relating to the status and autonomy of the veteran’s association. Part of the internal tension over political power, and ultimately claims over the roles played during the struggle over Apartheid, stems from the obvious disparities in the public visibility of the two organizations, their leadership, cadres, activists, and operations. Mandela was the universal, ubiquitous and iconic figure of not only the ANC, but the decades long resistance against Apartheid. His image, both as prisoner and later president, was synonymous with the struggle against white minority rule, and more broadly as anti-colonial leader of the global south (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2014). The MK, by comparison, was by design – and necessity – a shadowy organization, comprised of guerrilla fighters in remote camps and underground operatives spread throughout Southern Africa. It goes without saying that underground guerilla warfare required an intense degree of secrecy and security incompatible with mass media documentation.

Many MK recruits spent years training in terrible conditions in camps in the front-line states of Southern Africa, waiting to play their part in a liberating armed struggle that ultimately never transpired. Janet Cherry reminds us of those MK members who died of illness and in skirmishes with the SAP in and outside of South Africa ‘. . .are no longer publicly remembered. This kind of history always raises controversial issues around who is remembered and how: who was a hero, who a perpetrator, who a martyr and who a victim?’ (pp. 129–130). Thus when the ANC’s political legacy, under former disgraced President Jacob Zuma (2009–2018), started to crumble, it was not surprising to see a more activist MKMVA emerge, albeit one with some regrets, as one protest leader lamented: ‘We were trained by the ANC, we do not want to find ourselves using those tactics against our organisations’ (Magubane, 2018). That said, the corruption of the Zuma years, coupled with a faltering economy, contributed to increased militancy of the MKMVA and their campaigns for political recognition and social services. Tensions spilled over in 2018 as the ANC’s national executive committee reportedly debated the future of the future of Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association (MKMVA), some members actively advocated for the disbanding of the organization, while others sought to change the militant leadership. ² Following these internal divisions members of the MKMVA stepped up their public protests and political campaigns advocating for services, benefits, and jobs. With little online presence however, the MK relied mostly on media coverage of such actions to reach the wider South African public and political leaders.

Media infrastructure as armed propaganda

By drawing on the operational history of the MK we can better understand their contemporary media scarce political tactics. Historically the MK and their international supporters left the anti-Apartheid media campaign to the ANC’s leadership. But this didn’t mean avoiding mediated politics altogether, particularly after the ANC adopted a new strategy to mobilize the masses in the struggle and resistance against Apartheid in South Africa proper. The new military policy, articulated in yet another secretive document that was only read by a selective few leaders (the Green Book), would by 1981 usher in ‘Armed propaganda. . .a form of spectacular attacks. . .The purpose of such attacks was not so much to damage the South African war machine as to inform South Africa and the world that Umkhonto we Sizwe was in business. . .Armed propaganda was also intended to attract new recruits’ (Ellis, 2013: 128). Going forward this shift in policy placed greater emphasis on informal networks of underground and undercover MK operatives, backed by secretly embedded fighters in allied Mozambique.

The armed propaganda campaign reminds us that media scarcity has always been a factor in the operations of the MK and the lives of its members. Communication among cadres, fighters, ANC leaders, and overseas supporters was always haphazard, unstable, insecure, and dangerous. In other words, MK operatives and fighters always faced obstacles to communication, both with central command and with each other, again because they were constantly under threat of detection by the Apartheid state. Communications and media documentation meant potential identification, as a medium through which MK fighters and operatives could be targeted. Guerrilla fighters as a group of course are defined against a centralized and organized group or government. As a consequence, MK guerilla fighters and operatives were tasked with establishing de-centered, yet coordinated forms of communication, often as core elements of their missions. In short, they served as militants and infrastructure workers, establishing a system of communications that would be undetectable by the Apartheid state. ³

Consider the infrastructural example of media scarce ‘dead letters’ and media abundant dead letter offices, the latter of which has received some sustained attention from the American National Postal Museum and the American Smithsonian Magazine (Bruns, 1992). Dead letter offices housed misdirected, mislabeled or otherwise lost or undeliverable mail. ⁴ A photo in a recent Smithsonian magazine article of a dead letter office (dated 1922) shows piles of undelivered letters, packages, and boxes stacked to the storage room ceiling (Eschner, 2017). Four sets of what appear to be motorcycle tires further invoke the theme of failed circulation or stasis. The office invokes media theorist Siegert’s (1999) essays on the postal system, where he argues that letters – as media objects – only derived their cultural power once disseminated by a state sanctioned and administered postal service (p. 54). Following this train of thought, the notion of a dead letter makes some sense, its life cut short by failed circulation. Dead letters, however, also remind us of the simple failures of communications infrastructure, of the dependence upon the clarity of handwriting (among other things). The offices also further reinforce the previous discussion of abundance in media theory – dead letter offices were so inundated by misdirected letters and packages that they had to hold regular auctions to create more space for yet more undelivered mail.

By contrast, in the case of the clandestine operations of many MK operatives, dead letters became purposefully hidden and masked forms of communication, since there was no central communication system. Hence the use of dead letter boxes, an iconic form of clandestine communications during the cold war, particularly in East Germany. Dead letter boxes were often camouflaged as another media object, often a pen or other seemingly harmless and banal everyday object. Some MK leaders and operatives were trained by East German Stasi officers during the height of the struggle against Apartheid (Ellis, ibid). Communications and arms were placed in boxes and stored in locations where other MK operatives would later retrieve them. Such dead drops or boxes thus served to protect against operatives – or the content of boxes – being captured. These were scarce military objects and short, coded forms of communication, that if found would mask or misdirect their true meaning and intent. Moreover, taken as a whole these hidden dead letter boxes effectively served as a network of communications, arms, and other clandestine equipment.

Letters would also become a key weapon in the MKs post 1979 campaign of armed propaganda. Letter bomb campaigns were used by the MK as synchronized forms of communication, a powerful expression of coordination action – a literally weaponized communications network. One international MK recruit summarized his role one such campaign succinctly: ‘I had become an underground “postman” from another world’ (Schechter, 2012: 54). Central to the campaign was the deployment of a series of letter bombs stuffed inside innocuous looking briefcases, a hybrid communication/weapon that required a sophisticated and moreover coordinated system of deployment. Coordination was key as synchronized explosions of leaflets communicated to both the Apartheid state and to the townships that an active resistance was organized and dispersed.

One collection of testimonies of former MK recruits provides one of the most fulsome, and personal, accounts of several letter bombing campaigns throughout cities in South Africa (Keable, 2012). Given the lack of media images of such propaganda weapons, the collection of personal testimonies and memories opens with the editor’s hand drawn drawing of a bag that contained the leaflet bomb, including all the technical elements (time switch, wires) and a ‘Toy spider (or snake) to deter inquisitive people’ (p. v). Keable’s sketch of the MK’s homemade leaflet or letter bomb represents just one in a series of creative strategies used by former combatants and underground operatives to convey their roles in the struggle against Apartheid.

To summarize, historically MK operations were conducted underground or in secure, remote locations. As a consequence of the clandestine nature of the MK fight against Apartheid, operatives had to constantly avoid detection, and refrain from documenting their actual roles in operations or more broadly the fight against the South African security agencies. In this context it should come as no surprise that written texts, in the form of letters, emerged as a central node in coded communications (Toupin, 2016) and in the deployment of a propaganda war against Apartheid. In lieu of conducting a multi-mediated propaganda war then (films, videos, photography), the MK focused their attention on developing informal networks of communication among underground operatives that working in cells operationalized dead letter boxes, and synchronized letter bombs. The media scarce battle against Apartheid, in other words, was in part a battle conducted through infrastructure and spectacle. In the next section we lastly turn to contemporary representations of MK operations and in so doing place greater emphasis on personal stories of cadres and fighters as they engaged in a media scarce campaign against the South African state.

Media strategies: overcoming media scarcity

This last section analyzes the main strategies used to convey the history of the media scarce MK and its clandestine operatives, namely the widespread use of hand drawn images, cinematic re-enactments, and personal testimonials. Indeed, two of these main strategies were previously discussed in Keable’s edited collection of MK testimonials. Such examples are offered as a rebuttal to the dominant paradigm in media, a reminder that stories of media scarce communities and individuals are not only multi-faceted and performative, but also push the borders of creative mediation, beyond the singular, the iconic, or the shared digital media object. As such, we could argue that media scarcity calls into action a form of collaboration, a coming together to share memories, a rethinking of modes of expression, and a challenge to a broader audience to imagine and empathize with marginalized communities and actors like MK fighters, forced migrants and many others.

The hand drawn image is almost synonymous with clandestine, media scarce life. The drawing of a map or contact information on the back of a napkin or inside of a cigarette box always presages its disposal (or accidental discovery!). The aesthetic of the hand drawn image also tends to reinforce the DIY nature of the propaganda weapon and operation, as is the case in Keable’s ‘bucket-type leaflet bomb’ (ibid). Such aesthetics can in part be traced back to MK’s few publications, most notably in the monthly Dawn: Journal of Umkhonto we Sizwe (1977–1988) which consistently published hand drawn images on its cover, masthead (a sun) and typically spears and other similar weaponry in its table of contents. Apart from such hands drawn images, the entire series of publications is overwhelming text based, typed out on a manual typewriter. Take for example the ‘Souvenir Issue’ celebrating the anniversary of 25th, Anniversary of MK that includes a large unedited photo of the young Robben Island prisoner Nelson Mandela. Like many contemporary books on the MK, the issue includes photos of ANC and MK leaders, but uses hand drawn images of cadres to represent the masses of MK fighters. One such drawing depicts a cadre with raised fist holding a Kalashnikov rifle, the iconic weapon of anti-imperialist fighters of the time (Dawn, p. 3). The rifle is also a constant in MK posters celebrating various MK anniversaries. ⁵

MK posters similarly deployed hand drawn DIY like images that are more reminiscent of punk rock concert promotions than information objects in an armed struggle. Some posters can still be found today, for sale on internet poster stores. One such site offers a choice of four DIY like posters of the MK martyr Solomon Mahlangu. ⁶ Another heavily stylized MK poster by a South African designer and artist offers a more contemporary representation of MK, with abstract guns emerging out of a masked figure in a forest of cactus. ⁷ The most common motif in most drawings and through the sparse publications and posters from MK is the Zulu warrior, a near mythic figure that represents opposition to British Colonialism in South Africa (Laband, 2014). A hand drawn Zulu-like figure with oval shield and spear for example adorns the masthead of Dawn. The use of hand drawn spears is also prevalent throughout Dawn and on MK posters produced for distribution to the townships beginning in 1980. ⁸ It is only later in the 1980s as the end of Apartheid approached that MK posters began to consistently incorporate images of popular uprisings with the recognizable green, yellow, and black color scheme of the ANC. ⁹

Cinematic depictions of the injustices of the Apartheid era also reinforce the contrast between ANC and Mandela focused stories and those of MK. Fact-based dramatization of ANC leaders received Hollywood treatment, particularly after the brutal crackdowns of the 1980s when the threat of civil war was most pronounced, and the campaign for international sanctions took hold in many western countries and in the commonwealth. Arguably the international success of Richard Attenborough’s 1987 film Cry Freedom, that saw Denzel Washington depiction of Steve Biko receive an Oscar nomination, paved the way for a series of other dramatic representations of ANC figures including Winnie Mandela 2011 and Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom 2013. More recently, Neill Blomkamp’s science fiction films Alive in Joburg (2006) and the global hit District 9 (2009) mixed reality or documentary aesthetics with social commentary on the racial politics of the post-Apartheid Era.

Cinematic representations of MK operations and fighters are by contrast decidedly bare bones and sparse, particularly as global media products. Moreover, given the media scarce nature of MK history, underground and guerilla warfare stories have tended toward the documentary genre, where treatments consistently use re-enactments to fill in for the scarcity of media footage. The few widely circulated and accessible documentary films on the MK, namely MK – The People’s Army (1993 Dir. Zeph R. Makgetla), The Secret Safari (2001, Dir. Tom Zubrycki), The Luthuli Detachment (2007, Dir. Zolile ka Nqose), and The Vula Connection (2014, Dir. Marion Edmunds), all use re-enactments to tell the story of secret operations, or conduct interviews to hear the personal stories of MK vets.

This takes us to the last common communication strategy of media scarce MK members, the testimonial. Testimonials served as the key medium through which South Africa emerged out of the Apartheid era – in the form of the trust and reconciliation process that witnessed harrowing personal accounts of the devastating impact of decades of racist policies, police torture, and armed struggle. ¹⁰ In sum these testimonials were designed as a broader media strategy in support of civil society, as an attempt to put behind the many years of secrecy, covert operations, and state sanctioned discrimination and violence. Personal stories served to recognize past injustices, common grief, and hopes for a peaceful future.

Personal stories, moreover, have also served as a starting point for all other forms of media scarce communications discussed herein, whether it be a documentary script, history book, or drawing from a veteran’s memory. We have also seen that popular, mythic and artistic aesthetics also served important roles in the media scarce communication strategies of MK veterans and storytellers. Such DIY-like images furthermore served to reinforce the personal intensity in popular and armed resistance – to harness by any and all means a form of armed propaganda, and a creative ingenuity that was designed to inspire common and contagious forms of resistance. Given the secretive, underground life of MK operations and lives of its members, it should come as no surprise that mediated interventions or spectacles served as key sites and tactics of the armed propaganda campaign. Such events remind us of the importance of performance through media scarce communities, be they re-enactments or other creative expressions of common experiences. To this end we have also seen that media scarcity for the MK involved developing a corresponding, distributed and secure form of communication, a media scarce communications infrastructure specifically designed to distract, confuse, and camouflage the goals of MK.

Conclusion

Media campaigns and mediated histories of media scarce communities and individuals are complex and multi-faceted phenomenon that interface with a series of political and personal circumstances and agendas in South African and around the world. As previously noted, media scarcity is not restricted to former MK underground fighters and agents – the term could apply to any community that has sought to avoid media capture or have lost all of their possessions, including media archives. By definition these communities are marginalized, they may lack official documentation that is required to access government services and rights. But in the example discussed herein, we have also seen that media scarcity, or lacking media documents, has often led to creative performances and spectacular events, designed to communicate strength, resolve, and a persistent resistance to oppression and injustice. Different communication and storytelling strategies have deployed artistic approaches, and personal recollections that provide compelling personal details about traumatic and dangerous experiences serving underground in MK.

As noted in the introduction, the march of history, with a new generation of post-Apartheid citizens assuming leadership roles in South Africa, and fading memories and energies of MK veterans, has made the task of communicating media scarce experiences even greater. The high-profile nature of the ANC always and already put the MK in its shadow, making the case for veteran’s present day appeals and advocacy much more difficult. The MK though have produced and mobilized media artifacts on their own terms and from their own unique histories in the struggle against Apartheid. Some of these artifacts have been adopted and mobilized as digital media objects, as we have seen with regards to the image of the Zulu warrior, while other more nuanced treatments of South African history in cinema have also slowly begun to emerge. But, in retrospect, though media scarce, in the mediatized sense of the term – that is lacking in discrete media documents and objects, ready for circulation to a larger population – MK history tells another story, a story of media itself, of the grounds upon which communication, resistance, and struggle were launched.

Outlawed, hunted, and killed throughout the years of Apartheid, MK operatives and fighters offer an important corrective to the preoccupation of the attention economy, to the belief that media assets are the only form of political currency, the required communicative capital needed for social and political change. In this regard, the MK story, history, fighters, and operatives still remind us that political and social change must also recognize and amplify the efforts of infrastructural change, of produced networks that can resist oppression symbolically and materially.