The murder of Chris Hani: The neo-liberalization of South African news narratives

The African National Congress-led South African government has implemented numerous neo-liberal economic reforms, reforms grounded in the idea that the individual is a more effective unit around which to orient economic policy than the collective. During this implementation, a similar neo-liberalization occurred in news narratives, which came to focus on individuals rather than collectives. This article illustrates the neo-liberalization of news narratives through the narrative of the 1993 murder of Chris Hani, an important leader of the anti-apartheid struggle. His murder was initially framed in news narratives as having collective and not individual importance. As his killers’ legal cases progressed over the next sixteen years, news narratives came to centre on his family’s interests and desires, bracketing out the collective’s. This article’s analysis of the structure of news narratives contributes to the analysis of the broader struggle over neo-liberalism, one that demands examining all moments of neo-liberal logic.