Part One

What is the Mission of your organization?
Graduate education, research, making a democratic difference to post-apartheid South Africa within the context of Southern Africa as a whole.

How do political agendas in your nation's government and in the dominant media affect censorship of the news?
The public sphere is very vigorous but middle class tendencies emanating from some Members of Parliament and provincial governments tend towards calls for censorship where they should be lauding the openness of debate. The media and cultural research of our MA and Ph.D students, however, is mobilized nationally via the Internet, media and boards of directors of media companies to engage these cultural conservatives.

What are the challenges particular to media groups and development NGOs in Africa today?
To retain the relative openness of the public sphere as initially brought about by privatization and de- and re- regulation, and to use these spaces to empower civil society over the centralizing and controlling tendencies of national governments. CMS is achieving this by many means, one of them being our very extensive Web site, which publishes the best student dissertations and essays, republishes out-of-print articles, and so on. Our staff and students also consult for various development agencies, such as UNESCO, UNDP, the Forum of African Women Educationalists, local government departments, and so on.

Are there external factors that affect your project's work (social climate, political environment, cultural practices)?
Negative:
The commodification of the university, the state discrimination against humanities and social science students in terms of inadequate student bursaries and funding, the state and commerce's technologizing of social practices, are negative factors.

Positive:
Democracy has brought about our access to new funding and research and development opportunities via the UN, UNESCO, UNICEF, UNDP and other international agencies. We are now encouraged by our university and other institutions to participate in global Affiliateships. We are now able to work on Africa-wide projects.

What restrictions and barriers do women face in joining the ranks of professional media workers and/or development officers in your country?
One of the UNESCO-funded studies recently conducted by CMS related to employment of women. See: www.und.ac/za/und/ccms/unesco.

Are radical new media standards needed?
Protection of free speech is required as the new ANC-led state tends to regard principled criticism of government as unpatriotic and even racist. There is a growing sense within the ruling party that its government office bearers should be above criticism.

How has technology in communication and the media contributed to furthering development in your field work?
The Internet has been crucial, but most parts of Africa remain outside formal communications grids. However, our very extensive Web site is designed to imprint African scholarship and research on the international agenda.

Who benefits from the services you provide and how?
a) Employers of our graduates, which range through media, development, education, state, para-statal, the NGO sector, and so on.

b) Our research and public health communication initiatives directly benefit NGOs, communities and state vis-a-vis policy.

In what ways could the authorities in South Africa (and the rest of Africa) create a more enabling environment for groups like yours?
a) Softening of visa restrictions to enable greater mobility of faculty and students between countries.

b) Provision of financial aid for students coming from other parts of Africa.

Do you think that "globalization" is having an impact on your work and the communities you target?
On the negative side, our economy is held to ransom by currency speculators and "the international market"; on the positive side, our program is attracting students from all over the world. The dominance of the corporation globally is challenged by our social and research practices, and the opportunities thereby gauged out are engaged at a variety of institutional levels.

Have you sought to increase the size of your audience or the groups receiving your products and services. How do you fund your project?
a) CMS is funded: 1) by the University; 2) by national research agencies; 3) sponsored research; and 4) by contract research income. All research projects undertaken are of social and democratic significance.

b) We have about 50 students: 15 Ph.Ds, 15 MAs and 20 Honors students, from Africa and all over the world. These are mainly mature students, returning professionals, and individuals sent here by their organizations. They return to their countries of origin and carry on the good work.

c) In terms of research publication, readers are reached globally via our Web site, our journal Critical Arts, and a publishing Affiliateship with iAcademicBooks, Denver, Colorado, USA.

d) Some of our video productions are screened and sponsored by M-Net, and at festivals etc.

e) NGOs with which we have links, like Drama in AIDS (DramAidE), raise their own funds, but it's always a battle to keep them coming in.

Tell us about your staff.
Professor Lynn Dalrymple is director of the Drama in AIDS (DramAidE) NGO and of the Development, Media and Arts Research Unit, a joint venture with CMS. Professor of Drama at the University of Zululand, she is adjunct professor in CMS working with students via DramAidE on research topics on public health communication.

Ron Krabill is an adjunct lecturer, based at the New School University (NSU), New York. Ron's area is peace studies, and he is based in the NSU's historical Studies and Sociology programs when he is not in Durban. He teaches a comparative U.S.-South African course online.

Professor Keyan G. Tomaselli is a geography graduate from University of Witwatersrand (Wits), who later entered the film industry and then was employed by Wits and Rhodes Universities to teach film and TV production. His MA is in film and semiotics and his Ph.D is on South African cinema. His antiapartheid film making is well known, while his founding and editing of Critical Arts since 1980 challenged entrenched orthodoxies in theater, media and communication studies as taught in South Africa, in terms of a critical, democratic and human rights ethos. He was a co-writer of the Parliamentary White paper on Film, which was enacted as legislation in the late 1990s.

Professor Ruth Teer-Tomaselli is a two-time board member of the SA Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), the national public service broadcaster. She managed the SABC's voter education campaign during 1993-94 in the lead up to the first democratic elections in April, 1994. She consults for the Forum of African Women Educationalists, Nairobi, Kenya. She is a graduate in Development Studies from University of Witwatersrand and has consulted for UNDP and other agencies. Teer-Tomaselli has a long history of antiapartheid activism, and was a key member of a residents' association opposing the apartheid Group Areas Act. She is associate editor of Critical Arts.

Miranda Young is a Drama and Performance graduate with an MA in Media Studies from CMS. Her research is on issue- based performance in female prisons. She teachers a Theater for Development course in the Drama and Performance Studies Program at Natal University. She has also taught drama to underprivileged children. She worked after graduating in the U.K. as a credit controller and customer-services officer.

Susan Govender is Program Administrator and is loved by legions of visiting scholars, professors and researchers, all of whom have commented on her ability to cut through bureaucracy and to ensure maximum performance during their stay here.

Our researchers and part-time lecturers are CMS graduates, and our students come from all over Africa, Scandinavia, with some from the United States and other parts of the world. They come to Natal University because, they tell us, we offer a First World University in a Third World environment, while CMS offers an engagement of First World theory from African perspectives.

Part Two

What is the size of your organization?
CMS Permanent admin staff: Faculty: 3; Adjunct Faculty: 2; Part-time faculty: 2; Researchers: 2; Students: 50. University 25,000 students, 4 campuses.

Unit/ DramAidE (Drama in Aids):
Director: 1 (Also director of the Unit)
Office and financial managers: 3
Trainers 12

What are your organization's strengths/weaknesses?
Strengths:
CMS works in research and teaching and teams, building capacity in Affiliateship with health and development NGOs. Our students are mainly returning professionals, whose expertise and skills are used in strengthening our organization. As a graduate program our prime emphasis is on research. Students working on public health communication projects work via DramAidE. CMS is attracting relatively large sums of research funding from organizations like the National Research Foundation, UNESCO, the University, and via DramAidE from the Provincial Health Department, Johns Hopkins University, and so on.

Weaknesses:
Both CMS and DramAidE are short on administrative capacity. Incoming funding does not cover staff. DramAidE has to cover not only its research, office, and administration costs, but also the salaries of its employees. Funds are allocated to projects. In CMS, we have to undertake contract research to balance our operating budgets.

What kind of help does your organization need?
In a corporatizing university environment globally, we need help in securing resources to maintain a critical, praxis, developmental and human rights orientation in educating our socially committed students. Many less committed individuals are lured away by quick fix, sexy and market- driven courses and degrees. DramAidE requires assistance in fundraising for AIDS health education projects and to cover staff salaries.

The helpful resources would be: computers, visiting professors (of the critical variety only, thanks), visiting graduate students, voluntary interns, and bursaries for disadvantaged students, and on (for both CMS and DramAidE).

Do you have data, models or other resources you might share with nonprofit groups?
DramAidE has a wealth of field experience in communicating life skills and health messages to schools in South Africa. Evaluations of particular projects are published annually. CMS publishes all its research in the public domain. See our Web site: (For DramAidE go to the "Communication" hyperlink, click and then scroll down the menu to "Public Health Communication".

Have you had any successful collaboration with other media groups in your region? What was the collaboration about? If so, how did the collaboration work?
During the 1980s the following NGOs worked from our offices: Natal Film and Allied Workers Organization/Film and Allied Workers Organization, and the Durban Media Trainers' Group. (Free office space was provided, and CMS staff and students worked pro bono on these organizations' training projects, community organization, antiapartheid resistance, etc. Other groups for which we consulted included: End Conscription Campaign, the UmAfrika community newspaper, the Association for Democratic Journalists, and so on.

Currently, our association with media groups includes DramAidE via a formal Affiliateship, while members of our faculty and students work with the public service broadcaster (Dr. R.E. Teer-Tomaselli is a board director of the SA Broadcasting Corporation); with UNESCO (South African and regional), with the Forum for African Women Educationationalists (design of Web site, pan-African communications strategy, strategic planning, girls education), Training in Developing Countries Board of the International Association for Film and TV Schools, amongst many other initiatives such as the South African National Editors Forum.

CMS also has close, structured, working relations with all sectors of the Durban media industry: newspapers, broadcasting, film and cinema and telecommunications, especially. CMS is spearheading with Independent Newspapers KwaZulu-Natal the formation of the East Coast School of Journalism and Media. Other Affiliates in this venture include the Departments of Journalism at the ML Sultan and Natal Technikons. The School will create multiple entry and exist points for both undergraduate and post graduate students, including media professionals, to study a range of short and longer courses offered by CMS and the Technikons, including courses offered by other departments from all three institutions (eg. video technology, photography, graphic arts, media studies, communication, and so on.)

What are the main Internet news/media sites that you use on a regular basis?
MediaChannel, International Association for Media and Communication Research, CILECT (International Association of film and TV Schools), H-Lit (African literature and cinema), African Cinema, Drum Beat, Cultural Studies List, University Film and Video Association List, amongst others.

Do you feel you have an impact on the media made in your area? What do you feel you contribute to your community?
CMS has had a fundamental impact on the South Africa media.

Teer-Tomaselli as director of SABC Board provides theoretical arguments for freedom of speech while conservatives attempts to narrow this down. The role played by Teer-Tomaselli nationally cannot be over-emphasized in this regard.

Tomaselli co-wrote the Parliamentary White Paper on Film out of which the subsequent legislation emerged.

Students' work is regularly used with their permission by faculty to impact national debates on media content and structuring.

Our students have gone on to make significant contributions at provincial and national levels in terms of research, production, leadership and so on.

CMS has always had a clear commitment to the community, which has moved from antiapartheid resistance to policy, development, AIDS and public health communication, media training, and so on. All this information is available on our Web site.

CMS has made direct impact on debates on the SA media, and in terms of national policy, legislation, training and research. In terms of the National Research Foundation's grant disbursement, we are the premier South African graduate teaching/research facility.

CMS is also making an impact in the Southern African Development Community, via our National Research Foundation-sponsored transnational research project on the political economy of the Southern African Media, via the Southern African and South-South Working Group on Media, Culture and Communication. This project interfaces with a Caribbean project based at the University of West Indies and another being managed from the University of Oslo, involving five university departments in South Africa, Mozambique, Uganda and Zimbabwe, drawing in students (many of them returning professionals) from a much larger group of African countries and Norway.

DramAidE has been in operation since 1992, and between 1995 and 2000, was one of the three NGO Affiliates in the R33 million Beyond Awareness national educational campaigns on HIV/AIDS sponsored by the Department of health. It's education and life skills programs have reached over 1.5 million black school children.

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