Beyond the State: A Corporate Shaping of South Africa’s Political Imagination
Beyond the State: A Corporate Shaping of South Africa’s Political Imagination

Summary/Abstract: This article tests the limits of strategic communications by applying Neville Bolt’s definition to a corporate-led intervention: Anglo American’s High Road/Low Road scenarios in late apartheid South Africa. Through an interpretivist case study methodology that maps the campaign’s narratives, performances, and audiences to Bolt’s criteria, this article shows that a private actor, like a business, can, under specific conditions, conduct strategic communications in a security-salient environment. Far from diluting the concept, recognising such nonstate agency - anchored in liberal democratic values - sharpens the field’s paradigm for a networked era.

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