Security and Politics in South Africa

Security and Politics in South Africa
Author: Peter C. J. Vale
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781588261151

Exploring how the region is changing today - as transnational solidarity and a single regional economy remove the distinctions between national and international politics - he asks whether South African domination can finally be overcome and considers what sort of cosmopolitan political arrangement will be appropriate for southern Africa in the new century."--BOOK JACKET.

From Cape to Congo

From Cape to Congo
Author: Mwesiga Laurent Baregu
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2003
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781588261274

From the ongoing war in Angola, to sporadic instability in Zimbabwe and Lesotho, to the conflict in Congo, to issues of land reform and the ravages of AIDS, southern Africa faces varied and complex threats to its peace and security. The authors of From Cape to Congo assess the region's major security challenges, as well as the roles of local, regional, and external actors in managing them. Their theoretically informed - but practical - approach encompasses the political, economic, and military arenas.

The Security Arena in Africa

The Security Arena in Africa
Author: Tim Glawion
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2020-01-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1108659837

The labels 'state fragility' and 'civil war' suggest that security within several African countries has broken down. As Tim Glawion observes, however, while people do experience insecurity in some parts of conflict-affected countries, in other areas they live in relative security. Conducting in-depth field-research between 2014 and 2018, The Security Arena in Africa is based on first-hand insights into South Sudan and the Central African Republic during their ongoing civil wars, and Somalia's breakaway state of Somaliland. Gaining valuable accounts from the people whose security is at stake, this bottom-up perspective on discussions of peace and security tells vivid stories from the field to explore complex security dynamics, making theoretical insights translatable to real-world experiences and revealing how security is created and undermined in these fragile states.

The Security-development Nexus

The Security-development Nexus
Author: Lars Buur
Publisher: HSRC Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2007
Genre: Africa, Southern
ISBN:

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.

Community of Insecurity

Community of Insecurity
Author: Dr Laurie Nathan
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2013-04-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1409476677

Exploring the formation, evolution and effectiveness of the regional security arrangements of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), Nathan examines a number of vital and troubling questions: ∗ why has SADC struggled to establish a viable security regime? ∗ why has it been unable to engage in successful peacemaking?, and ∗ why has it defied the optimistic prognosis in the early 1990s that it would build a security community in Southern Africa? He argues that the answers to these questions lie in the absence of common values among member states, the weakness of these states and their unwillingness to surrender sovereignty to the regional organization. Paradoxically, the challenge of building a co-operative security regime lies more at the national level than at the regional level. The author's perspective is based on a unique mix of insider access, analytical rigour and accessible theory.

The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa

The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa
Author: Richard A. Wilson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2001-05-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780521802192

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was set up to deal with the human rights violations of apartheid. However, the TRC's restorative justice approach did not always serve the needs of communities at a local level. Based on extended anthropological fieldwork, this book illustrates the impact of the TRC in urban African communities in Johannesburg. It argues that the TRC had little effect on popular ideas of justice as retribution. This provocative study deepens our understanding of post-apartheid South Africa and the use of human rights discourse.

Social Media and Politics in Africa

Social Media and Politics in Africa
Author: Maggie Dwyer
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2019-07-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 178699500X

The smartphone and social media have transformed Africa, allowing people across the continent to share ideas, organise, and participate in politics like never before. While both activists and governments alike have turned to social media as a new form of political mobilization, some African states have increasingly sought to clamp down on the technology, introducing restrictive laws or shutting down networks altogether. Drawing on over a dozen new empirical case studies – from Kenya to Somalia, South Africa to Tanzania – this collection explores how rapidly growing social media use is reshaping political engagement in Africa. But while social media has often been hailed as a liberating tool, the book demonstrates how it has often served to reinforce existing power dynamics, rather than challenge them. Featuring experts from a range of disciplines from across the continent, this collection is the first comprehensive overview of social media and politics in Africa. By examining the historical, political, and social context in which these media platforms are used, the book reveals the profound effects of cyber-activism, cyber-crime, state policing and surveillance on political participation.

Twilight Policing

Twilight Policing
Author: Tessa G. Diphoorn
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2015-10-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520287339

South Africa boasts the largest private security sector in the entire world, reflecting deep anxieties about violence, security, and governance. Twilight Policing is an ethnographic study of the daily policing practices of armed response officersÑa specific type of private security officerÑand their interactions with citizens and the state police in Durban, South Africa. This book shows how their policing practices simultaneously undermine and support the state, resulting in actions that are neither public nor private, but something in between, something Òtwilight.Ó Their performances of security are also punitive, disciplinary, and exclusionary, and they work to reinforce post-apartheid racial and economic inequalities. Ultimately, Twilight Policing helps to illuminate how citizens survive volatile conditions and to whom they assign the authority to guide them in the process.

Political Corruption in South Africa

Political Corruption in South Africa
Author: Tom Lodge
Publisher:
Total Pages: 26
Release: 1997
Genre: Political corruption
ISBN:

Paper presented at the Third Biennial Meeting of the African Studies Association of South Africa (ASASA) : Africa in a changing world : patterns and prospects, Magaliesberg Conference Centre, Broederstroom, 8-10 Sep 1997.