ABSTRACT
This chapter evaluates the prospects for South African transnational media becoming one of the contending soft powers in the African continent. The evaluation of South Africa’s transnational media is contextualized within a detailed history of the relationship between South Africa and the ‘rest’ of the African continent. The notion of ‘soft power’ was coined by the American political scientist Joseph Nye to describe the way in which a country like the United States could achieve its strategic objectives by enhancing its attractiveness rather than using hard threats and sanctions. South African businesses grew alongside colonization of the continent, and are therefore often viewed as having benefitted from exploitative cheap labour systems and extraction of profit back to South Africa. The financing and regulatory mechanisms in South Africa have allowed the country’s companies to expand into the rest of the continent, particularly in the southern African region.
