Security And Politics In South Africa

This analysis of South Africa's postapartheid security system moves beyond a realist discussion of interacting states to examine Southern Africa as an integrated whole. Despite South Africa's manipulation of state structures and elites in the region for its own ends, the text argues, the suffering endured under the apartheid regime drew the region together at the popular level, and economic factors such as the use of migrant labor reinforced the process of integration. Exploring how the region is changing today--as transnational solidarity and a single regional economy remove the distinctions between national and international politics--the book explores 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.

Southern Africa has embarked on one of the world's most ambitious security co-operation initiatives, seeking to roll out the principles of the United Nations at regional levels. This book examines the triangular relationship between democratisation, the character of democracy and its deficits, and national security practices and perceptions of eleven southern African states. It explores what impact these processes and practices have had on the collaborative security project in the region. Based on national studies conducted by African academics and security practitioners over three years, it includes an examination of the way security is conceived and managed, as well as a comparative analysis of regional security co-operation in the developing world.

Do existing measures of state fragility measure fragility accurately? Based on commonly used fragility measures, South Africa (SA) is classified as a relatively stable state, yet rising violent crime, high unemployment, endemic poverty, eroding public trust, identity group based preferential treatment policies, and the rapid rise of the private security sector are all indications that SA may be suffering from latent state fragility. Based on a comprehensive view of security, this study examines the extent to which measures of political legitimacy and good governance, effectiveness in the security system – especially with respect to the police system – and mounting economic challenges may be undermining the stability of SA in ways undetected by commonly used measures of state fragility. Using a mixed-methods approach based on quantitative secondary data analysis and semi-structured interviews with government officials, security practitioners, and leading experts in the field, this study finds that the combination of colonization, apartheid, liberation struggle, transition from autocracy to democracy, high levels of direct and structural violence, stagnating social, political, and economic developments make South Africa a latently fragile state. Conceptually, the results of this research call into question the validity of commonly used measures of state fragility and suggest the need for a more comprehensive approach to assessing state fragility. Practically, this study offers a number of concrete policy recommendations for how South Africa may address mounting levels of latent state fragility.

Focusing on the South African city of Durban, Security in the Bubble looks at spatialized security practices, engaging with strategies and dilemmas of urban security governance in cities around the world. While apartheid was spatial governance at its most brutal, postapartheid South African cities have tried to reinvent space, using it as a “positive” technique of governance. Christine Hentschel traces the contours of two emerging urban regimes of governing security in contemporary Durban: handsome space and instant space. Handsome space is about aesthetic and affective communication as means to making places safe. Instant space, on the other hand, addresses the crime-related personal “navigation” systems employed by urban residents whenever they circulate through the city. While handsome space embraces the powers of attraction, instant space operates through the powers of fleeing. In both regimes, security is conceived not as a public good but as a situational experience that can. No longer reducible to the after-pains of racial apartheid, this city’s fragmentation is now better conceptualized, according to Hentschel, as a heterogeneous ensemble of bubbles of imagined safety.

This cohesive and challenging collection of academic essays represents a radical analysis, indeed re-interpretation, of the political, social and economic events which have occurred within the new South Africa since the momentous 1994 general election. Chapters by three of the leading authorities in the field of South African history and politics, Professors Marks, Spence and Gutheridge, concisely examine the prospects for stability and progress as the key fields of regional and international security, armed forces integration and social and economic policy. Three other authors examine, sometimes in controversial fashion, the progress of and prospects for the three main political parties: the ANC; the NP; and the IFP. A further three studies address the ramifications of recent elections, developments in the arms industry and changes in the political economy of the new South Africa. The book as a whole will be seen as the first comprehensive study of the security prospects of the New South Africa under the inspired leadership of Nelson Mandela.

This work is a study of civil-military relations in the Republic of South Africa while Pieter Willem Botha was prime minister (1978-89). The author's controversial thesis is that Prime Minister Botha, recognizing that his country had reached the historical juncture when it needed to establish a new political order encompassing all of its diverse peoples, moved effectively to prepare the ground for fundamental constitutional change. What was needed above all were stabilization measures to assure the support of the white population for reform. Botha used the South African defence force as his primary instrument. By 1989, Professor Roherty maintains, a striking degree of stabilization had been achieved within the country and throughout South Africa, and the groundwork for epochal change had been prepared. The author makes use of exclusive interviews with South Africans from the political, military, intelligence, corporate, and academic worlds.

This book analyzes recent alterations in African security politics, focusing on regionalization of civil wars, transnational aspects of African conflicts, African regional peacekeeping efforts, the privatization of security in Africa, and the role of the UN in peacekeeping.