11

“Unity in Diversity?”

South African Women's Reception of National and Global Images of Belonging

Shelley-Jean Bradfield

State discourses of nation-building in South Africa are predicated on the notion of multiculturalism as an ideology that enables the incorporation of previously segregated citizens into the embrace of the nation's newly founded democracy. Public television's endeavor to translate this ideology into programming content addresses the plurality of citizen-viewers in the country through the stipulation of language and local content quotas, among other corporate objectives. But scholars have yet to assess how women negotiate the South African Broadcasting Corporation's (SABC's) attempts to reproduce a shared sense of national identity, and the manner in which they view and interpret television as a means to participate in the national public sphere. While a bulk of the research concentrates on the changes in television broadcasting since its inception in 1976, a few studies, outside of institutional marketing research and social science health communication, have examined how audiences in South Africa construct their identities in relation to the television programs they enjoy or reject. Moreover, the few reception studies that exist center on either the reception of global media (Salo, 2003; Strelitz, 2005; Tager, 1997), or they delve only into the reception of specific local South African television texts (Milton, 2005; Roome, 1999). This chapter intervenes in the field of knowledge on television in South Africa by investigating the heterogeneous manner in which audiences utilize local and global programming in their identification as national subjects.

In May 2007 and October 2008 I interviewed 25 women in South Africa about their television viewing practices; their responses demonstrate the extent to which viewers differ in their reception of televised projects of national unity. For instance, Liso, a young black college-aged student, spoke of her identification with the themes and characters of two national soap operas:

Taking pleasure in soap operas that are designed to bring together a broad viewing audience around issues of nation, Liso accepted the objectives of the shows even though she critically acknowledged their lack of relevance to the South African context. Yet, even as Liso embraced the goal of bringing citizens together around common television shows, Darlene, a middle-aged white mother of two, expressed her dismissal of national productions for what she considered to be their inferior production qualities:

Darlene's wholesale rejection of national television images raises the matter of imported programming, which she prefers to watch and identifies with closely.

Considering how women identify with or reject national and imported programming, I employ the related concepts of cultural proximity (Straubhaar, 1991) and multiple proximities (La Pastina & Straubhaar, 2005) as frameworks for examining how some viewers selectively identified with a national sense of self that was (re) produced through local public television programming, whereas other viewers resonated more deeply with imported programming, which extended the sense of belonging to a space beyond the nation. Described as a preference for broadcasting content that appears to be most similar or proximate to the experiences, context, values, language, and culture of a specific audience, the concept of cultural proximity predicts the popularity of media content that stems from similar geolinguistic or geocultural regions. Extending this theory further, the concept of multiple proximities illuminates how audiences might perceive international media products – among other possible proximities – as more proximate to their experiences, even when national versions of such texts are available. These two approaches to reception demonstrate, as Iwabuchi (2002) argues, that a sense of proximity is not inherent to or contained within the media text, but arises due to the strategic choices that audiences make in their judgments of proximity/similarity or distance/difference.

Examining women's responses to both national and imported programming while making particular reference to the national case study of Home Affairs, a domestically produced program, the present study suggests that viewers negotiated national belonging in the context of this show in one of three ways: women responded antagonistically to the sense of national belonging represented in the show, or they collaborated by identifying closely with Home Affairs images of themselves and their concerns depicted on the national screen, and/or women took up a critical position by simultaneously sympathizing with and supporting the national project articulated in Home Affairs, even as they also expressed preferences for shows from outside the nation. While closely registering with Stuart Hall's (1973) analysis of audience members' responses to news and current affairs programming as taking up “preferred,” “negotiated,” or “oppositional” positions, this study also parallels Ien Ang's (1982) analysis of Dutch viewers of Dallas, some of whom experienced pleasure, while others articulated displeasure through references to the ideology of mass culture, and others still employed a position of ironic viewing that negotiated criticism against mass media products yet admitted to the viewing pleasures of Dallas. Accordingly, I argue that, while the South African state's adoption of multiculturalism as a mechanism for unity in diversity is being translated onto the small screen, women across identity groups report varying degrees of national identification, degrees that often correlate with their positions of class, race, ethnicity, and education.

Analyzing the reception of television texts within the borders of South Africa as well as the transnational reception of texts from the United States originating outside of the country, I first explore the ways in which white women distance themselves from nation-building rhetoric and express preferences for programming from other national contexts. Second, I take into account how older black women identify with programming on the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) that they believe addresses issues of the nation directly. And, finally, I attend to a mixed racial and ethnic group of women who demonstrate more ambivalent responses to the pedagogy of a programming that has been designed to unify people around national concerns. I attempt to open up a space for women's voices by integrating their words in quotations throughout this chapter: this is the provenance of all the quotations where no source is given. The paradoxical responses of women to national programming gives us glimpses of the exclusive qualities of the lived experiences of multiculturalism versus the imagined success of the televised national endeavor.

The Home Affairs of South African Television

Following the lives of nine women in the first series and of six women in the subsequent series, Home Affairs asserts its uniqueness as a show by claiming to be “a drama series for women, about women and entirely produced and created by women with an all female writing and directing team, as well as a female director of photography – a first for South Africa” (SAARF, 2008). As the show is airing during adult viewing time, both its content and its scheduled broadcast time emphasize its unique feminine voice, even though the show did employ creative personnel who are men – including writers, directors, a director of photography, and numerous other production staff – and attracted an audience of both men and women. While Home Affairs is typical of other nationally produced television texts that incorporate a diverse range of characters and languages, its focus on “the connections people share with one another, unwittingly or not” is more unusual (SABC, 2010). The extent of these connections is exemplified first through Thandeka (Nthati Moshesh) – executive of Young Blood, a nongovernmental officer (NGO) – who admits to being Katleho's (Lerato Moloisane) biological mother despite leaving her from birth in the care of Thandeka's older sister Nonhlanhla (Nomsa Xaba). Moreover, by offering sports scholarships (through her NGO) to young women from economically deprived situations, Thandeka becomes involved in Vuyokazi's (Brenda Ngxoli) dream of escaping poverty. In response to Thandeka's revelation of her status as a parent, Katleho, a young black woman, turns for comfort to Katherine (Jessica Haines), a white friend from childhood, – a surprisingly close relationship considering their diverse racial identities in the context of a history of segregation. Finally, making every effort to utilize her resources to tackle difficult social issues such as poverty and lack of education, Shanti (Sorisha Naidoo), an Indian medical doctor, offers state sponsored assistance to Cherise (Therese Benade), a young white woman whom she suspects of being involved in an abusive romantic relationship.

Although multicultural casts and settings are typical dramatic conventions taken up in South African dramas, sitcoms, and action series, their incorporation into television is part of an intentional objective to help reunite citizens who have emerged out of a history of segregation. State and institutional discourses of nation-building and their translation onto the small screen are crucial issues that inform the multilayered responses of women to Home Affairs, their sense of its proximity in the matter of defining citizenship, and their acceptance or refusal of women's place and status, as these attitudes are defined through television images of the nation.

To facilitate a discussion about plot, themes, and characters in Home Affairs and to encourage participants to think more generally about their television pleasures and viewing habits, including their use of national and imported media content, I screened the thirteenth and final episode of the first series of Home Affairs.¹ This final episode was staged as a drama that follows the unexpected interconnections between women in South Africa who hail from diverse backgrounds, locations, cultures, and age groups. Produced by Penguin Films, an independent production company, Home Affairs aired on SABC1, a public service channel of the SABC, which is in turn the oldest and largest television institution in the country. The one-hour drama played on Thursday nights for 13 weeks, in competition with The Apprentice: SA (2004–) on SABC3, the SABC's commercial channel, and with Desperate Housewives (2004–) on M-Net, a subscription-based television service. On the basis of its popularity and of the nation-building objectives that it fulfilled,² Home Affairs I was rebroadcast in early 2006 and recommissioned as a second series in 2006; a third and fourth series were commissioned and broadcast in 2007 and 2009, respectively.³ Each series was composed of 13 episodes, except for the fourth and final series, which comprised 26 episodes each.

Apparently illustrating Straubhaar's (1991) notion of cultural proximity, Home Affairs garnered approximately half of the market share during its premiere on September 15, 2005, in spite of competing with the US-format adaptation of Apprentice SA, broadcast on SABC3, and with Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), a US feature film broadcast on e.tv (this is a privately owned, free-to-air television company). Also demonstrating a partiality for nationally produced genres besides dramas, Generations (1993–), a South African soap opera broadcast on SABC1, attracted half of the national audience in spite of competing with the long-running US soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful (1987–). Moreover, by consistently attracting a market share of 40% or more across its first, second, and third series, Home Affairs indicates audience loyalty for national television shows, particularly as the balance of the available free-to-air audience was spread over three other channels, namely SABC2, SABC3, and e.tv (SAARF, 2008).⁴ Notwithstanding the show's success, however, the market share average does not address the ways in which identity categories factor into audience preferences, or the ways in which some viewers regarded Home Affairs as culturally similar and appealing while others overlooked the possible pleasures of this text and assumed identification with imported shows.

Imagining and Mediating the Nation

Expanding access to the public sphere with the transition to democracy in 1994 from an apartheid state, the Government of National Unity and, later, two African National Congress (ANC) governments represented by Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki defined nation-building as “facilitating processes of exchange and dialogue between South Africa's different cultural, regional, and linguistic communities” (Barnett, 1999). Recognizing the demographic plurality of racial groups, ethnicities, and languages among other things, the post-apartheid state envisions accommodating this diversity through multiculturalism, or the equal treatment of all people from different social locations (ibid.).⁵ Although the term “multiculturalism” is seldom used in South African policy debates, the existing cultural diversity presupposes the importance of considering how the state designs and regulates policies concerning diversity and the commonsensical set of beliefs that South African society should be organized around the notion of cultural pluralism. Yet the implementation of multicultural policies and ideologies has been hindered by multiple obstacles to its realization (Brown, 2000). For one, the notion of ethnicity as primary identity required for a political community harks back to primordialist ideas of ethnocultural nationalism and assumes citizens' need for separation from other ethnic communities. Second, while multiculturalism emphasizes the rights of collectivities, when individual rights are subordinated to minority group rights, the potential for individuals to thrive is considerably reduced. Third, even though multiculturalism envisions a society of shared power and resources, minority communities often cannot agree on how to distribute these resources. Finally, even as multiculturalism emphasizes the protection of minority groups, this ideology marginalizes disadvantaged individuals from within ethnic majority groups and thus undermines the possibility of equality through diversity.

Confronting the challenges faced by the multicultural nation, the South African Constitution seeks to guarantee the equality of language groups, and policies of language equity have been expanded to include mandates for broadcasting institutions. In particular, the SABC is expected to “play a part in healing divisions of the past; to promote respect for democratic values and human rights; to supply information that allows citizens to exercise their rights, and to reflect the rich diversity of a united South Africa” (SABC, n.d.). As part of the nation-building agenda, the regulatory agency of broadcasting and telecommunications, which is the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, has outlined local content quotas for each broadcaster, including the SABC – whose two public service channels shoulder the bulk of public service and local content programming in the country.⁶ Corresponding with the “African Renaissance” – that is, Mbeki's version of multicultural nationalism, in which South Africans rediscover and recreate images in their own likeness – local content regulations not only specify the amount of national programming on the schedule per channel, but also spell out local content quotas per genre, so that South Africans see themselves and their experiences to be constructed and reflected, rather than modeling themselves off the lives and hopes of people from outside the country. Yet, although multiple national identities are promoted through policies, regulation, and programming, the increased dependence of broadcasting on advertising and on its objectives limits the success of the project of unity through diversity. Because television, and the SABC in this instance, is not the recipient of significant amounts of public funding, programming is commissioned to deliver the largest possible number of consumer audiences to advertisers rather than principally to serve the diverse interests and needs of viewers as citizens (Barnett, 1999).

Familiarity Breeds Contempt

That Home Affairs appeals mostly to women who are young and not white seems to be a foregone conclusion of the white women whom I interviewed, whose ages ranged from 39 to 65. Highly educated, with one graduate degree, two undergraduate degrees, and a high school diploma represented in this group of four, these women agreed that the show explored themes and characters that targeted groups other than themselves. Mary, an upper-middle-class stay-at-home mother and wife, hypothesized that young black women and “colored” women who were less well educated might be the objects of this nation-building programming, while Marie, an upper-middle-class career woman, wife, and mother assumed that younger women in their late teens and early twenties would enjoy watching Home Affairs and thus assimilate its themes of uniting the nation. Interestingly, Darlene, a lower-middle-class working mother and wife, reasoned that the national project was directed at the working-class, as none of her middle-class acquaintances followed the show:

Yet, even as they imagined other citizens as the targets of nation-building rhetoric, these women identified somewhat with the themes of the show. Understanding the decision of Thandeka (a high-powered black executive) to look after a white abandoned baby as a gesture that was symbolic of the racial integration underway in South Africa, Grace empathized with Thandeka's prior economic and career decision to give her daughter Katleho away at birth, and she admired Thandeka's courage to adopt a white child later on, even though that would prove challenging in a racially stratified society: “It was so beautiful when Thandeka takes home Cherise's white baby [. . .] it shows realistic and future possibilities of integration.” Marie also pointed to the theme of racial integration that she saw illustrated through Katleho and Katherine's friendship. Noting that “my children are friends with some black children at their school,” Marie reflected on the positive effects of representing multiracial relationships on television. Acknowledging her sons' friendships across race, Mary reflected on the significance of the fact that her daughters did not cultivate relationships that straddled diverse identity categories (“maybe it is a girl thing not to have good friends across race”), even though her theory flew in the face of Katleho and Katherine's friendship. Significantly, Mary asserted that “races get on pretty well in South Africa” and that cultural diversity was supported through increasing instances of subtitled programming on television that depicted a range of racial and ethnic groups.

The historical pressure placed on rural black women like Thandeka to leave their children with other family members, so that they may find work such as “charring” in urban areas, was another storyline familiar to women.⁷ Mary noted: “[Katleho's] being abandoned is pretty typical but it is not typical that Thandeka didn't stay in contact.” Likewise, Darlene noted the historical theme of extended family caring for children of domestic workers, although she, too, contrasted the practices of her domestic help with Thandeka's abandonment of Katleho:

Although the circumstances of Home Affairs were familiar to these women, they found the development of the storylines difficult to reconcile with their personal experiences.

Although these four women agreed that Home Affairs attempted to take up the South African experience through a social realism mode of address that was familiar to them, their explanations as to why they did not watch Home Affairs differed to some extent.⁸ Instead of finding pleasure in programming that directly resonated with their daily lives, these women preferred shows that they perceived as being not “overdramatized,” not “too intense,” not grappling with the “real problems” of South Africa, and as parading “beautiful people” with “stories that aren't so close to home.” Besides criticizing second-language English accents as irritating, Mary felt that “local shows don't hold high enough status among viewers in South Africa because they show such bad acting – more like stage acting. So local shows don't have status when compared to British, US, and Australian programming. And South African issues are real problems.” As a result, she preferred viewing imported programming that delved into lifestyles and values to which she could aspire on the basis of her upper-class status and access to cultural capital: her competent use of English, her stimulating career and qualifications, and her frequent international travel (Bourdieu, 2001).⁹

Even though the show explored social transformation in a dramatic format, which Marie generally enjoyed in imported programming, the dismal tone and the representation of serious and often insurmountable social problems discouraged her from watching local dramas that leaned toward realism: “I would only watch Home Affairs to get a handle on what my daughters might be going through, and what other parents feel about Cherise's pregnancy (out of wedlock), for example.” In addition, assuming that the show only targeted younger women in their late teens and early twenties, Marie acknowledged that imported programming was more applicable to her life: “I prefer to watch shows with beautiful people and stories that aren't so close to home.” Thus, while acknowledging the ways in which Home Affairs attempted to model “how to improve your life,” Marie did not perceive these images as being relevant to her own life.

Darlene, who was the most articulate one about her preference for imported programming, remarked on the inferiority of locally produced television programming, which seemed out of tune with her life and exhibited low production values:

Besides critiquing the production qualities of local programming, Darlene also found the subtitling of multicultural programming alienating rather than inviting, and she experienced the content of South African productions as too upsetting:

Contrasting the emotional intensity of Home Affairs that she despised to The Bold and the Beautiful, a US soap opera she had watched since college, Darlene explained that she admired the powerful female characters on The Bold and viewed their lives with pleasure. She reported that she enjoyed the show even though she would never behave like these characters, and that she had become an erratic fan now that she had young children in the house. The cultural capital she possessed was demonstrated in the form of a college degree and of her having spent her teenage years living in the United States. This cultural competence facilitated her comprehension of, and appreciation for, slang, jokes, and historical references that tended to be nation-specific.¹⁰ Although Darlene did not possess the financial means to mimic the lifestyles featured on imported shows, she identified herself as upper middle class with regards to her social attitudes and aspirations, elements that distinguished her from other members of the lower middle class. As in Press and Cole's (2001) findings about how working-class women either identified with or resisted television images of themselves, Darlene posed as “upper middle class-identified,” thereby criticizing the attitudes and behaviors of people of her own social rank and aligning herself with images of upward mobility. Further supporting Press and Cole's study, the upper-middle-class women in this study assessed the proximity of imported programming positively, because it reflected adequately their lifestyles and social and economic ambitions.

White women's disinclination to watch nationally produced shows that speak to South African issues and concerns appears to emerge from their desire to avoid engaging with serious matters that pose as entertainment and from their peripheral sense of national identity, with the help of which they are able to overlook the realities of a large portion of the population as irrelevant to their own “imagined community.” Explaining the ways in which national identities can frequently be described as fragmented, La Pastina (2003, p. 12) makes a case for “mediated and conflicting notions of the nation that can potentially alienate rather than integrate the members of the nation who are peripheral to the power structures.” Even though white women have historically been linked to power structures in South Africa, a fact that distinguishes them from the rural residents of Macambira to which La Pastina refers, the deficit in national media representations to establish their significance to the nation works to distance them from any involvement in constructions of group loyalty to the nation. Consequently, at the same time as images of national realities and concerns are constructed for television programming, white women assume their peripheral standing in such “depressing” matters of national uplift and racial progress. As in other well-educated and wealthy audiences, these women construct identities that pivot around television cultures, humor, and lifestyles originating in anglophone countries outside of Africa, and in particular around programming from the United States. Developing a stronger sense of proximity on the basis of the cultural and economic capital that is represented in imported makeover shows, travel shows, dramas, crime shows, and soap operas, these women, and by extension all those with access to extensive cultural capital, distanced themselves from national television representations. They sought out instead experiences of belonging that described a sense of nation much closer to their own imaginings – ideas very different from those held by women whose responses resonated with the national programming, as will be discussed below.

Familiarity and Desirability

Differing markedly from the white women who rejected national programming as unappealing and gloomy, four black women with whom I spoke engaged willingly with Home Affairs and other nationally produced shows. Claiming to be fans mostly of South African soap operas and neglecting imported programming completely, all four women were long-term aficionadas of Generations (1993–), Muvhango (1998–), and Isidingo (1998–), soap operas that speak specifically to the South African context.¹¹ Moreover, all four women had watched the bulk of the first series of Home Affairs and related the events on the show to their personal experiences and the broader context of developments taking place in the country.

Each of these women – single mothers between the ages of 39 and 50 – spoke at least three of the following languages: Tswana, Sotho, Xhosa, Zulu, English, and Afrikaans. Three of the women – Elsa, Ephie, and Adela – grew up in rural areas and relocated to a large city, where they found employment as domestic workers in wealthy white women's homes; they left their children in the care of family and were frequently sending financial support for them. The fourth and youngest woman, Yolande, had not relocated but lived in the town of her birth and labored as a domestic worker at a local high school. Adela and Yolande had acquired some high school education, but Elsa and Ephie only had a few years of primary school, the US equivalent of elementary school.

As mothers who had co-parented their children with the help of family and friends, all four women reacted viscerally to the act of Cherise deserting her newborn; Yolanda repeatedly queried “Where is the baby? Where is the baby?” while Elsa shook her head back and forth as she assimilated the abandonment. Immersed in other storylines as well, these women displayed more interactivity with the content and characters than any of the other participants in the study. When Nandi expressed her joy by ululating and doing a quick dance at the departure gate of the airport on her way to London, a journey she had been anticipating for years, the women laughed out loud and displayed great pleasure with her accomplishment.¹² In addition, Elsa covered her eyes with her hands and made a crooning sound when Danny beat Cherise, even as Yolande shot out questions about whether Cherise would report the abuse and fight for her rights. Reflecting on her life experience, Yolande contemplated the negative consequences that women face when they choose to fight for their rights, consequences that often result in abuse from their husbands; and she followed this remark with a sigh. After recovering from watching Cherise's beating, all four women empathized with Cherise's utter desperation, and they proffered advice at her every turn, articulating new responses each time she appeared on-screen. Proposing that she contact her parents about the abuse or take the baby-girl to an orphanage or clinic rather than leaving her in the street, these women identified closely with Cherise's personal problems and expressed familiarity with situations that appeared hopeless.

Trying to account for why Thandeka, a black woman, was willing to care for a white baby, Yolande speculated that Thandeka's concern for the baby stemmed from the remorse she felt about leaving her daughter with her sister at birth: “she's still guilty right now when she sees [something] like this – that is why she decides to take this child.” And when Thandeka asked the clinic doctor what kind of a person would leave her baby in the street, Yolande leaned forward toward the screen and offered “just like you,” confirming Thandeka's personal accountability while simultaneously expressing sympathy for Cherise's abandoned baby's cries.

Assuming that Home Affairs was realistic, Yolande remarked on a similar situation, in which a white child had been adopted by a black woman, a scenario she felt was representative of most interracial adoptions. Believing that racial differences should not factor into the availability of social assistance, these women assumed that people across the spectrum would enjoy watching Home Affairs, because the show represented the country's breadth of racial and ethnic identities. These women agreed that their life experiences as domestic workers were depicted in the drama through several characters; hence they felt close affinities with all of the characters except two Indian couples, with whom they were less familiar. Although Yolande shopped for household items in the Indian section of town, she felt her interactions and observations were limited to the formalities of business transactions.

By linking their everyday lives to the themes and characters of Home Affairs, these women demonstrated their engagement with the drama and its similarities to their own lives. Just as the poor female domestic workers in Cairo investigated in Abu-Lughod's (2005) study related television images to their own experiences, these black working-class women made close correlations between television characters, real life, and the increasing number of instances where national programming had registered their tastes and experiences – an inclusion that clearly resonated with their sense of belonging to the nation. While not actively involved in the fight for access to the political–public sphere, these women nevertheless illustrate the ideal of this concept through their resonance with representations that reflect multiculturalism and offer new ways of imagining such realities, even though such images are constructed within middle-class imaginings. Like women in the nineteenth century in the United States who “found circuitous routes” to “have a voice in some space open and accessible to all where they could be counted in the general interest,” these women celebrated the reflection and reproduction of their views and experiences as a gesture toward their inclusion in the public sphere (Ryan, 1992). Significantly, even as these women recognized the correspondence between television images and their lives as domestic workers, their interpretations were influenced by the ways in which they positioned themselves as being “middle class-identified,” even though their economic means made them part of the working class (Press & Cole, 2001). By subscribing to middle-class values and lifestyles in spite of their lack of financial capital, these women were able to discern similar tastes and experiences, which were chronicled by national culture industries. While they clearly disagreed with Cherise's decision to walk away from her newborn, they did not judge her coldly but offered her advice and assistance as she negotiated the difficulties of life and relationships. Furthermore, these women understood Thandeka's nurture of Cherise's baby as a step toward assuming responsibility for her own abandoned daughter. Their exuberant and interactive style of endorsing the values and characters in this show suggests the ways in which they established the show as proximate to their lives, even though it originated in a different social context and economic class; and they experienced this proximity as pleasurable – celebrating the value of their lives as domestic servants, mothers, friends, and women. However, not all women found the themes of the show to be proximate or preferred; this I will show in the next section, where I discuss the responses of a group of women who tended to negotiate Home Affairs meanings to a greater extent.

Familiarity and Ubiquity

Calling attention to what Iwabuchi describes as the situated notion of proximity or the ability of individuals to perceive similarities that are particular to their own experiences, background, and location rather than a quality inherent to the television artifact, the third group of viewers whom I interviewed recognized similarities both in nationally produced programs and in shows derived from the United States. Their impression that both types of programming were proximate to their experiences and realities works to define similarity in ways different from those of the other viewers – both black and white – who found correspondence either in imported or in nationally produced programming. By way of example, all 17 women in this group followed at least one South African soap opera, namely Generations, Isidingo, Muvhango, and/or Sewende Laan, while also claiming to be fans of one or more US soap operas such as The Bold and the Beautiful and Days of Our Lives. Occupying diverse categories of identity, these women were multilingual, multiethnic, multiracial; they ranged between 20 and 54 years of age, and some held graduate or bachelor degrees while others had only attended elementary or high school without completing their education and yet others described themselves as college students, stay-at-home wives, mothers, and/or working women.

Although these participants reportedly viewed both the imported and the South African programming, nevertheless they tended to favor one over the other and offered a variety of explanations and identifications to justify their pleasures. Some of these explanations accounted for the participants' sense of inclusion in the nation, while others intimated that they sought lifestyles and/or exercised values that did not mark them as national subjects. On the whole, these women adopted two stances toward programming: either they aligned themselves with the pleasures of the South African content, which they perceived to be realistic or comparable to their experiences or national knowledge; or they distanced themselves from the enjoyment of South African programming, which they found too realistic, even though they oftentimes described instances of recognition and engagement with the content.

As avid enthusiasts of South African soap operas, 11 women chronicled their fondness for South African content, even though they did watch imported programming to a greater or lesser extent. In their view, South African programming, and Home Affairs in particular, largely reflected their own everyday lives or experiences, was pedagogical in nature, and functioned to inspire citizens to imagine better lives; and this in spite of the fact that these same women were at times critical of the storylines and character development. While the notion of realism was central to these women's complicated pleasure in viewing Home Affairs, a second group of women, made up of six, observed a similar degree of realism in South African programming but experienced this “reality” as distasteful and off-putting. Confirming La Pastina and Straubhaar's (2005) findings that audiences respond to programming on multiple cultural levels in addition to geolinguistic similarity, these women accounted for their enjoyment of imported programming as staging undemanding, universal themes, in contrast to the uniquely South African conditions that characterized national shows. In other words, the realism of national programming that resonated and inspired the first group worked to alienate the second group of women, even though they recognized their lives and the social problems of the country in the content.

Describing Home Affairs as realistic because “it's kind of similar to our daily lives – most of the times [the things] that are happening there, [the things that] they portray, are like our real lives,” Nonne, a black middle-class college student from a neighboring country, represents both groups of mixed women, to judge by the ways in which the themes and characters ring true to her experience of being South African. Referring to Thandeka's abandonment of Katleho, Nonne noted: “you can see that, nowadays, there are so many babies and also children. I think [women] do that [abandon their babies], yeah, they do that. It can be because of AIDS or it can be because of this kind of thing [career goals].” Liso, a young black middle-class college student from a neighboring country, also admitted to the realism of Cherise's abandonment of her baby; she thought that “mothers do reject babies and can't take care of them – I found that real.” Moreover, she pointed to Katleho's hush-hush adoption by Nonhlanhla as a likely way to handle such a sensitive situation: “I found it true, the fact that Katleho maybe knew that Thandeka was her mother but that it wasn't something that was spoken about in the open. It's like sort of something that's hidden. I found that real – it does happen like that.”

In addition to mostly perceiving the show to be a realistic and accurate reflection of the South African experience, these 11 women also experienced pleasure through the show's moralistic and didactic tone. Thandiwe, a working-class Xhosa-speaking black woman in her thirties with an elementary school education, believed that Home Affairs modeled the possibilities of transformation so that viewers could see “what our lives should be.” For example Cherise, or any abused woman, “should have left her boyfriend”; and children should forgive their parents' mistakes, just as Nonhlanhla teaches Katleho: “Your mother was doing that [abandoning you] but now you must forgive your mother.” Likewise, Gugu, a middle-class black woman in her forties who spoke Zulu and was also an international traveler with an undergraduate degree, mentioned that her favorite aspect of Home Affairs was its pedagogical disposition: “I could feel that if my son was faithfully watching it, he could have learned a lot from it, you know, especially from the angle of drugs, of women abused, all of those.” Mandisa, a middle-class Xhosa-speaking black woman in her thirties with a professional degree, maintained that the show taught viewers to differentiate between cause and effect:

Mandisa thus drew attention to the ways in which the realism of the show highlighted social practices and suggested the need for change.

Beyond comparing the show to their own lives, women found the themes of the show inspirational even if they also took a critical stance toward particular characters and storylines. Thandiwe emphasized that Home Affairs depicted life as it could/should be in South Africa: “I think it is saying ‘this is what our lives should be,’ Mam – because other people got no feelings for their wives. Sometimes the whites got no feelings for the blacks but some of the people have that feeling.” Sharing Thandiwe's perspective for the potential for change in the country, Gugu highlighted the expanded possibilities for university students and young adults to cultivate relationships across race and class: “But now with these kids [Katleho and Katherine], both at university, outside the family environment, they could be attached [in spite of their different races] without any problem.” Gugu thus found encouragement that young adults could forge more open relationships, as was illustrated on Home Affairs.

Even though women experienced pleasure in watching programming that was explicitly set in South African contexts, their engagement with shows such as Home Affairs was not a simple and straightforward identification. Instead, women were frequently critical of the ways in which realism was achieved, even as they identified at a general level with the authenticity of the show. Their capacity for distinguishing depictions of reality from their own daily realities suggests the anachronism of paternalistic and protectionist media policies that assess national viewers as infantile or deluded. As agents capable of evaluating critically messages of the media, viewers were thus able to conduct conversations about the reality of life in South Africa, as well as about general issues that they found compelling, from shows such as Home Affairs.

Demonstrating a critical approach to her enjoyment of Home Affairs, Amelia, a lower-middle-class 20-year-old “colored” woman, found Cherise's abandonment of her baby on the street implausible. She explained that “[Cherise] could have looked after the child. White women do not abandon their babies – they have other options.” Demonstrating awareness of the racialized nature of economic capital, Amelia explained that white women typically possessed greater access to material resources than “colored” people like her. In a similar vein, Abigail, a working-class “colored” college student, connected the plot of Home Affairs with her own life, although she, too, was cognizant of the differences between the show and reality. Refusing to believe that a white woman like Cherise might suffer abuse, Abigail presupposed that such pain would more likely be inflicted on women who were “colored” or black, a matter-of-fact assumption she illustrated through her narration of a friend's experience of having her baby removed from her care because she was an unfit “colored” mother.

Although the second group of women also acknowledged the realistic mode of presentation in Home Affairs, they did not find pleasure in the aesthetics of this realistic national programming but instead gravitated toward imported programming that offered them entertainment rather than education. As a fan of Bold and Days rather than Generations or Isidingo, Olivia, a Tswana-speaking lower-middle-class black college student attending college in a rural area of the country, explained that US soap operas “are clear – you understand – you don't have to think, they're just straightforward.” In contrast, she explained that South African soap operas blend programming objectives into “edutainment,” as was apparent in Cherise's storyline, which required viewers to think: “when you see someone abandoning a child you obviously feel for that situation – you feel for the child. I think you come to a point where you feel, you know where you have that feeling that it is very wrong.”

Like Olivia, who had a sense of the educational impulse of South African shows, Mamello, a Sotho-speaking middle-class black college student, felt that South African shows were too realistic for her to enjoy: “even in the comedies [. . .] they deal with reality too much. You know, crime and the past, and they don't move on – even the comedies! Comedy's supposed to make you laugh, not depressed!” She found US shows more compelling on account of what she described as their lighthearted and inconsequential themes and tones.

Although the realism of Home Affairs was perceived by some women to be unattractive, these same women nonetheless identified closely with characters in the show. Mamello identified with the character of Thandeka, whose successful career in an NGO highlighted burgeoning career opportunities for black women in the country since the introduction of democracy. Acknowledging the benefits that her racial classification offered, as “it is even easier for them to hire me because I am black and a woman and I can go up very quickly and move to partner,” she also conceded that such policies were “pushing those women [black women chief executive officers (CEOs)] to go there and when they get there, they're scared, they're neglecting their families for work, they're divorced.” Seeing her own experience mirrored in Thandeka, Mamello was nevertheless ambivalent about the effects of affirmative action policies, which reduced her pleasure in watching the show, as such moral lessons in the plot prevented her from relaxing during the show.

Farrah and Yafia, two Indian women who identified themselves as middle-class Muslim wives and mothers, typically watched very few South African productions and preferred imported programming, although both were engrossed in watching the episode of Home Affairs screened during the interview. Finding the show to be realistic and of current interest on account of its focus on interracial relationships – such as that between Thandeka, who is black, and Cherise's baby, who is white – Farrah remarked on how the show corresponded with the changing values of the Muslim Indian community, which was grappling with the increasing problems of abandonment of babies and premarital sex – issues she felt had not been widespread when she was growing up. Significantly, despite acknowledging the social value of national programming, these two women did not elect to watch shows like Home Affairs, citing as reasons the need to screen its content from their young children (which they did by utilizing the tools of satellite television) and their preference for content related to the Muslim faith or community that was produced in other national contexts.

Although part of a group of women who preferred imported media content but nevertheless viewed a range of national programs, these women offered explanations for their viewing practices and pleasures that implied that the life they imagined as ideal was not identical with national life as portrayed on television. While recognizing similarities in national television representations that felt true to the South African experience, these women did not desire the way of life depicted in national programming, and in some cases they held characters on the show in low moral regard. Significantly, while women in this group spanned a wide range of identities and had diverse ethnic, racial, age, and geographic origins, their economic affiliations tended to be middle class, and this similarity between them appeared to predict their preference for imported programming. Aspiring to a standard of living and social practices that emphasized beauty, optimism, and humor, much like the group of white women, these viewers veered away from social realist programming – or, in this case, shows produced by the nation. Calling attention to the notion of cultural competency to understand how black women viewers of The Color Purple negotiated the ideological meaning of the film, Bobo (2006) notes how viewers resonated with images of black women's histories and experiences, even though these images were produced within the institutional framework of white dominance. Similarly, the middle-class position of South African viewers shapes the interpretations they make of Home Affairs, particularly the fact that they prefer imported media images that promise more affluent lifestyles with fewer moral lessons. Using their class competencies, then, viewers interpret domestic shows as targeting women other than themselves, and thus they dismiss the relevance of national images of belonging.

Conclusion: Multiple Proximities and Nation-Building

In an attempt to expand the scope of South African audience research, this study has engaged with the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, and class to examine how women respond to projects of multicultural nationalism through their reception of domestic and imported television programming. Although a diverse group of women were interviewed, several gaps remain still to be explored in future research. While this study focused on women's use of Home Affairs as one instance of local programming, men's reactions to such dramas remain unknown, even as a greater variety of social positions might suggest other uses of local programming, such as black upper-middle-class women's utilization of national programming and white working-class women's responses to shows such as Home Affairs. My analysis of interview data collected for this study shows that women viewers of Home Affairs recognized, to varying degrees, the ideologies of nation-building and multiculturalism that informed the show, since they maintained that this drama taught viewers how to improve the quality of their lives by aspiring to integration or unity in diversity. Depending on their partiality toward social realist programming, women reacted antagonistically, collaboratively, or critically to the goal of multicultural integration.

In their response to programming that they viewed as depressing and unrelated to their way of life or ambitions, white upper-middle-class women were inclined to reject the aesthetics and politics of social realism in dramas that invited them to participate in rebuilding the nation. Conscious of the manner in which Home Affairs constructed distinctive South African experiences in order to establish a sense of proximity, these viewers refused any corresponding identification. Rooted in their ample cultural and economic capital, viewers in this group identified more with programming stemming from anglophone geolinguistic regions that they deemed as relevant for their dreams and practices of upward mobility. Although these women made a cursory comparison of their lives to characters and themes in the show, the resulting similarities did not generate pleasure and often produced a rather unsympathetic response: viewers turned away from what they felt to be the grim realities of some South Africans' lives that triggered discomfort and anxiety. Confirming Iwabuchi's (2002) finding that cultural proximities, assumed to reside in local programming, do not necessarily create pleasure for national viewers, this group of white women preferred instead to watch imported programming that they identified as more contiguous with their social aspirations and as reinforcing their middle-class lifestyles and values. Yet, although white women in this study refused participation in the nation-building project and, by extension, refused integration in the multicultural nation, their oppositional stance is not necessarily any more progressive than black women's adoption of nation-building rhetoric. Presuming to be outside of the nation's project of uplift and not conceiving of themselves as targets of nation building, these white women looked elsewhere for images of themselves. In other words, white women perceived themselves to be peripheral to the ideologies of integration and uplift, a perception anticipated by critics of multiculturalism who recognize the unlikely possibility that all subjects of the discourse of equality will be satisfied with their piece of the pie. On the basis of their cultural competencies, these women identified with other, more affluent national media industries and images of citizens, which depended less on social responsibility and more on ideologies of individualism and consumerism.

Although white women used imported programming for relaxation and entertainment, a group of older black working-class women preferred South African programming that they found inspirational for its portrayal of women in situations similar to their own, and, more often than not, they rendered images of citizens who valued racial integration, economic transformation, and ongoing reconciliation. As objects of nation-building rhetoric, these black women appreciated Home Affairs and aligned themselves with the moral imperative of creating unity; they did so by cheering on the characters' attempts to connect with each other and by wholeheartedly accepting the objective of integration, even though they had scarcely benefited from such national policies. Their sense that Home Affairs examined and exposed sensitive issues facing women, particularly women who were poor or who found themselves in relationships of abuse, underlines the ways in which television can create public spheres by promoting issues of general concern for discussion and debate. What is also clear from their comments, however, is that ordinary citizens lack the power to call for social change, and that television mostly serves as an arena for opinion formation and the exchange of information. As Press (1991) demonstrates, class is a key predictor of how audiences interpret media texts. To judge television content, working-class women thus appeared to use different criteria from those of upper-middle-class women, and they identified with nation-building ideologies that sought to legitimize citizens, regarding them as crucial to the progress of the nation. Moreover, the intersections of race and class informed audience decodings of television, as was evident in black working-class women's collective responses to the meanings of Home Affairs. These women's choice to view solely domestic programming appears to be contingent on the economic and cultural capital they possessed.

If the gratification described by these black women gestures toward an uncomplicated collaboration with official rhetoric, women who located proximity in both national and imported programming expressed a sense of critical identification with national objectives. One group of women exhibited a sense of cautious immediacy in relation to national programming, while a second group presented a more ambivalent relationship, out of deference for the ideas and lifestyles portrayed in imported shows. While both groups, composed of black, “colored,” and Indian women, recognized Home Affairs as uniquely South African, the first group located a sense of hopefulness in the themes of the show while simultaneously identifying the ongoing legacies of apartheid, in which working-class black and “colored” women assumed the greatest burden of poverty and accumulated the fewest benefits from policies of affirmative action and multiculturalism.

Differences between the first group, women who critically accepted the pleasures of Home Affairs, and the second group, women who were more ambivalent in their identification, suggest the multiple points of proximity in women's relations with television programming and the complex modes of pleasure that are embedded in their social situations. Identifying several instances of similarity between their lives and the characters featured in Home Affairs, participants in the second group alternately described their lack of sympathy with the show and displayed a sense of recognition that the show somehow felt didactic rather than entertaining. Accordingly, while they watched national programming, these women were more hesitant about the pleasures of Home Affairs, a show they would not normally choose to watch.

Whereas racial affiliation appears to explain the interpretive strategies that both white upper-middle-class women and older working-class black women use to create meaning in television texts, the third group's responses cannot be consigned to a purely “racialized” analysis of the reception of domestic and international shows. Presenting a diverse range of identity positions, which encompassed race, ethnicity, age, geographic location, and religion, women in the third group did not respond according to any one homogenous category. However, as Bobo's theory of cultural competency illustrates, marginalized viewers may react either positively or negatively to media texts created within the dominant ideology. As citizens previously marginalized in the apartheid state, black, “colored,” and Indian viewers have experienced a history of symbolic annihilation or the absence of media images of themselves on television. The recent proliferation of multicultural images on television provides women with images that they can either reject completely or negotiate more positively within the contexts of their histories and daily lives. On the basis of their cultural competencies related to class and race, women in this third group negotiated images that, for some, were more positive and reflective of their experiences, and for others held more negative associations and meanings, grounded in their backgrounds and social affiliations.

As women who live within the borders of South Africa and claim their rights as legal residents or citizens, the participants demonstrated multilayered identities through their varied attitudes toward nation-building rhetoric translated into television programming. Although the philosophy of multiculturalism promises the celebration and equality of all cultures, races, and genders, the accomplishment of South African unity in diversity has not yet materialized as a horizontal integration, but has instead been perceived by many women as one of fragmentation and even isolation. While multicultural nationalism has the potential to usher in an era of liberation (largely for the black majority), this form of nationalism perpetuates the historical legacy of national exclusivity – not only of white women, who feel estranged from any national identity, but also of women whose race and class intersect to construct identities that are not hailed by multicultural nationalism and who critically assess the ways in which the nation-state has delivered or not on the promise of inclusive citizenship.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This research study was supported by a Louise McNutt Dissertation Year Award, a Project of African Expressive Traditions Research and Travel Grant, and an Office of International Programs Pre-dissertation Travel Grant, all from Indiana University, Bloomington.

NOTES

¹ Serial shows on television in South Africa are referred to as “series” rather than as “seasons,” a typical convention in the US.

² Commissioning Editors at the SABC, whom I interviewed in 2008, explained how, even though a show might not meet the Market Share expected by the commissioning channel, it might be recommissioned for a subsequent series if it met particular objectives, such as the language mandate criteria required by the channel.

³ Unlike the US system, the SABC initially commissions shows for an entire series, usually 13 episodes for a drama, and it seldom cancels episodes before the series has aired completely.

⁴ Market share details were not available for the 2009 season at the time of this writing.

⁵ The theoretical challenge to national unity posed by heterogeneous cultures is to develop “unity in diversity” or “forms of political integration that are sensitive to, compatible with, and accommodating of varieties of difference” (see McCarthy, 1999).

⁶ “Local” content quotas refer to programming that is produced in South Africa rather than alluding to programming that is produced in a local or regional area within or outside of the nation.

⁷ Charring refers to household work that is hired out to women by the day. Historically, black and “colored” women in South Africa have earned their wages by charring in white women's homes.

⁸ Social realism is a visual style adopted by SABC1 that “reflects [people's] lives and their concerns, that takes their views into consideration – not tabloid or sensational” (SABC, 2008, p. 17).

⁹ Pierre Bourdieu describes four types of capital that define individuals beyond their social class: economic capital that can be translated into money; cultural capital that stems from educational qualifications; social capital represented by group memberships and cultivated to secure profits; and symbolic capital, or the unstated prestige, honor, and attention that signal access to a network of resources (see Bourdieu, 2001).

¹⁰ While programming from the United States contains references to the national context, some authors argue that United States programming successfully crosses national boundaries because audiences have become familiar with its conventions and themes and do not perceive such programming to be foreign or unfamiliar.

¹¹ Generations (1993–) is a long-running soap opera set in an advertising agency headed by Karabo, the only surviving member of the Moroka family. Surrounded by a group of women as her assistants, Karabo is challenged by powerful men, as well as by Anne de Villiers, an employee at the agency for control of Ezweni Communications. Created by Mfundi Vundla, it is the most watched soap opera in the country on SABC1; Muvhango (1998–) is a Venda-language soap opera set in a Johannesburg township and it centers on the conflicts between a family across the rural and urban divide; is broadcast on SABC2. Isidingo (1998–) airs on SABC3 and centers on the relationships between the Haines family, which owns On!TV, and the Matabane family from Horizon Deep, a mining town. The soap opera is written by head writer Greig Coetzee.

¹² Ululating is a high-pitched sound, produced by the fast moving tongue and uvula.

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