Children, Angels and Demons: The Coloniality of Print Media Representations of (Dis)ability in South Africa (1978–2023)

South Africa presents a unique case for the study of the link between historical and present day inequalities, as it emerged relatively recently from colonialism and institutionalised segregation. While racial, socio-economic and gender discrimination takes centre stage in the media, disability has been relatively neglected. In the present article, we examine representations of people with disabilities in ten newspapers between 1978 and 2023. Using a qualitative approach, 48 articles were codified and analysed thematically. Articles were deductively allocated to categories emerging from the scholarly literature on historical forms of inequality. A decolonial theoretical lens reveals how past and recent stories employ colonial and patriarchal epistemological tools of oppression such as infantilisation, idealisation and/or demonisation. Representations of people with disabilities as children, angels or demons, understood not as outright and deliberate mystifications but rather as unconscious, often internalised and largely benevolent constructions of (dis)ability, concurrently feed the symbolic violence of able bodies as naturally superior, as reference points and as primary interlocutors and justify persisting inequalities.