Public relations (PR) in nation-building: An exploration of the South African presidential discourse

•Public relations can advance the country's nation-building efforts and goals by enhancing national unity.•Political presidential discourse may work well for nation-building.•In addition, relationship building, maintaining, managing may be the important approaches for nation-building.•The application of a PR approach will promotes unity of effort in South African landscape for social cohesion.

This research explored public relations strategies employed in the presidential discourses for building relationships among South Africans in a democracy. This was done through analyzing political discourses of the three South African Presidents since 1994–2009 of Mandela, Mbeki and Zuma. A comparative discourse analysis was used to examine five important dimensions in political discourses concerning nation-building. Different themes were identified: relationship managing, democracy, national identity, and national development. Additionally, an exploratory discourse analysis was conducted to further investigate the characteristics of the presidential political discourses on nation-building. These analyses in the present research provide contributions to foster cooperation, developing a common national identity agenda and social cohesion using political campaign strategies, particularly for government, policymakers and public relations practitioners (PRP's), government communication practitioners, who strive to build a better relationship between government and the public.