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Makeovers Made Over: Ubuntu and Decolonization in Reality TV

Narratives about Africa are often shaped by deficit discourses that frame “development” as an instrument for advancing the interests of global capitalism. From within this neoliberal view, Africa has to “catch up” to and “be taught” how to emulate and achieve the standards promulgated in mainstream media. Through the lens of an alternative realism, however, such narratives can be reshaped. The African philosophy of ubuntu is one example of a deeply relational ethic from within which development can be reconceptualized as “freedom” in terms of democratic ideals and which can be used as a guiding principle for media work and the refashioning of (reality television) images.