This study draws from life histories to present constraints and possibilities that have shaped former SWAPO exiles economic reintegration in post-colonial Namibia from 1989 through 2018. The book advances three arguments, each of which pushes beyond existing scholarship on Namibia and/or economic reintegration broadly. Collectively, these arguments challenge dominant narratives that have generalized former SWAPO exiles economic reintegration experiences, highlighting that there is no single narrative that can describe their unique life stories of reintegration in the post-colony.
This book explores the emergent character of social orders in Sudan and South Sudan. It provides vivid insights into multitudes of ordering practices and their complex negotiation. Recurring patterns of exclusion and ongoing struggles to reconfigure disadvantaged positions are investigated as are shifting borders, changing alliances and relationships with land and language. The book takes a careful and close look at institutional arrangements that shape everyday life in the Sudans, probing how social forms have persisted or changed. It proposes reading the post-colonial history of the Sudans as a continuous struggle to find institutional orders valid for all citizens. The separation of Sudan and South Sudan in 2011 has not solved this dilemma. Exclusionary and exploitative practices endure and inhibit the rule of law, distributive justice, political participation and functioning infrastructure. Analyses of historical records and recent ethnographic data assembled here show that orders do not result directly from intended courses of action, planning and orchestration but from contingently emerging patterns. The studies included look beyond dominant elites caught in violent fights for powers, cycles of civil war and fragile peace agreements to explore a broad range of social formations, some of which may have the potential to glue people and things together in peaceful co-existence, while others give way to new violence.
During Zimbabwe's war of liberation (1965–80), fought between Zimbabwean nationalists and the minority-white Rhodesian settler-colonial regime, thousands of black soldiers volunteered for and served in the Rhodesian Army. This seeming paradox has often been noted by scholars and military researchers, yet little has been heard from black Rhodesian veterans themselves. Drawing from original interviews with black Rhodesian veterans and extensive archival research, M. T. Howard tackles the question of why so many black soldiers fought steadfastly and effectively for the Rhodesian Army, demonstrating that they felt loyalty to their comrades and regiments and not the Smith regime. Howard also shows that units in which black soldiers served – particularly the Rhodesian African Rifles – were fundamental to the Rhodesian counter-insurgency campaign. Highlighting the pivotal role black Rhodesian veterans played during both the war and the tumultuous early years of independence, this is a crucial contribution to the study of Zimbabwean decolonisation.
This book is a critical comparative reflection of the post-colonial conflict Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) of ex-combatants in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa. It offers an up-to-date comparative analysis of how specific analytical elements that transcend state boundaries shaped DDR in the three southern African countries. The author explores structural and organizational frameworks, target groups, state leadership in DDR, linkages between DDR and SSR in nation and state building, and types of post-conflict violence. The volume draws on fieldwork including interviews with policy makers and government officials as well as ex-combatants and experts to provide valuable insights into how post-colonial conflict DDR can provide knowledge crucial to understanding and addressing the problems of post-conflict peace building in Africa. The book is aimed at academics, researchers and students working on Southern Africa; African and Western policymakers concerned with problematic post-conflict situations on the continent, where improvising DDR processes will be vital to success; as well as the general reader interested in political, security and other developments in the region. It will be of use in postgraduate courses in the inter-related fields of international relations, comparative government, conflict resolution and peacebuilding.
The link between security and development has been rediscovered after 9/11 by a broad range of scholars. Focusing on Southern Africa, the Security-Development Nexus shows that the much debated linkage is by no means a recent invention. Rather, the security/development linkage has been an important element of the state policies of colonial as well as post-colonial regimes during the Cold War, and it seems to be prospering in new configurations under the present wave of democratic transitions. Contributors focus on a variety of contexts from South Africa, Mozambique and Namibia, to Zimbabwe and Democratic Congo; they explore the nexus and our understanding of security and development through the prism of peace-keeping interventions, community policing, human rights, gender, land contests, squatters, nation and state-building, social movements, DDR programmes and the different trajectories democratization has taken in different parts of the region.
This publication focuses on the gender dimensions of intrastate conflicts (civil wars), organised around eight key themes of gender and warfare, sexual violence, formal and informal peace processes, post-conflict legal frameworks, work issues, rehabilitation of social services and community-driven development. For each theme, the authors examine the impact on gender roles of conflict situations, the development challenges involved, and the policy options available to help build more inclusive and gender balanced post-conflict societies.
Peacebuilding, Power, and Politics in Africa is a critical reflection on peacebuilding efforts in Africa. The authors expose the tensions and contradictions in different clusters of peacebuilding activities, including peace negotiations; statebuilding; security sector governance; and disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration. Essays also address the institutional framework for peacebuilding in Africa and the ideological underpinnings of key institutions, including the African Union, NEPAD, the African Development Bank, the Pan-African Ministers Conference for Public and Civil Service, the UN Peacebuilding Commission, the World Bank, and the International Criminal Court. The volume includes on-the-ground case study chapters on Sudan, the Great Lakes Region of Africa, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the Niger Delta, Southern Africa, and Somalia, analyzing how peacebuilding operates in particular African contexts. The authors adopt a variety of approaches, but they share a conviction that peacebuilding in Africa is not a script that is authored solely in Western capitals and in the corridors of the United Nations. Rather, the writers in this volume focus on the interaction between local and global ideas and practices in the reconstitution of authority and livelihoods after conflict. The book systematically showcases the tensions that occur within and between the many actors involved in the peacebuilding industry, as well as their intended beneficiaries. It looks at the multiple ways in which peacebuilding ideas and initiatives are reinforced, questioned, reappropriated, and redesigned by different African actors. A joint project between the Centre for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town, South Africa, and the Centre of African Studies at the University of Cambridge.
