The Great Trek North

The Great Trek North: The expansion of South African media and ICT companies into the SADC region by Console Tleane

(by the Freedom of Expression Institute, with the assistance of OSISA,  2006. ISBN: 0-620-34905-0)

Given a legacy where the apartheid state's super-growth is partly attributable to its systematic exploitation of Southern African natural and human resources (the latter in the mines and on the farms that produced the surplus that became the financial basis for glitter and wealth of the Witwatersrand metropolis and other indicators of South African capital accumulation), and given the destabilisation efforts of the apartheid state – which immeasurably pulled back the development of regional countries such as Mozambique and Angola – the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region has keenly watched post-apartheid South African industrial and trade policy since 1994.

What was, the region asked, to be the new South Africa's role: new engine of Southern African growth and strength, or new sub-imperialist?