Considerations on the role of media and information in building a new South Africa

If South Africa's potential is to be realized, the nation will need to be fully integrated into the global electronic information age. A future South African government can choose between two basic courses of action: (i) emphasis could be placed on reinforcing and expanding the technological infrastructures required to further the development of a post-Fordist South African information economy or (ii) emphasis could be placed on the modernist industrial base at the expense of the information economy and communication technologies of post-Fordism. The challenge lies in avoiding dependency on the West by accepting the top-down relations associated with multi-national capitalism.