Abstract
In this piece of work, I have posed the following questions: How was blindness made part of the Blunkett scandal? What significance did the Blunkett scandal have in an African context? My conclusion is that Blindness was not given that much attention in the coverage of the scandal. Thus it did not affect the outcome, something which is positive for equality. However, it was given the attention any anomaly would have done, something we see in one of the articles analysed, What s blindness got to do with it? With regards to the second question, I have concluded that although the Blunkett scandal was not that significant, and even less so in an African context, it played a big role in the debate around an African democracy. I am therefore arguing that it had a great symbolic significance. This is concluded from the article What if Blunkett were African? The thesis starts with a chapter outlining why I chose to look closer into the Blunkett scandal and the chapter also discusses the two elements I am looking at throughout the thesis: Scandal and disability. In chapter two, we take a deep dive into scandal theory, in chapter three, disability theory, how is disability covered in the media? Chapter four gives us a short biography of David Blunkett as well as looking more in depth into the scandal. Chapter five is the methods chapter and in chapter six, I analyse the previously mentioned articles and provide answers to the research questions. Chapter seven sees the conclusion to the thesis.