Suchergebnisse

This article - an edited version of Chapter 4 of my forthcoming book "First Among Unequals: South African Security Discourses on Southern Africa" - focuses on the ideological conceptualization, and brutal treatment, of foreign migrants in post-apartheid South Africa. Notwithstanding the sacrifices of Africa's people to the cause of South Africa's liberation or the reality that South Africa was made by migrants, foreign African migrants in "liberated" and "democratic" South Africa have been subjected to a regime of violent othering. Contribution to this rising tide of xenophobia, the so-called "think-tank" arm of the security industry, has woven a discourse around the idea that migration to South Africa constitutes a threat to national security which, in turn, has watered the notion that post-apartheid South Africa needs a powerful, modern and well-armed military. The end result is that the received understandings of the apartheid era as to what constitutes the state and its security have been neither changed nor discarded, but reinvented and reinforced in what was once imagined would be a new beginning to thinking about security in this region. (Politikon - www.tandf.co.uk /journals DÜI)

Eulogizes South African political scientist Maseko, highlighting his academic career & strong character.

A review essay on books by (1) Korwa Gombe Adar & Rok Ajulu (Eds), Globalization and Emerging Trends in African States' Foreign Policymaking Processes: A Comparative Perspective of Southern Africa (London: Ashgate, 2002); (2) Patrick Bond, Against Global Apartheid: South Africa Meets the World Bank, IMF and International Finance (Cape Town, South Africa: U Cape Town Press, 2001); (3) Greg Mills, The Wired World: South Africa, Foreign Policy and Globalization (Cape Town, South Africa: Tafelberg for the South African Institute for International Affairs, 2000); (4) Philip Nel, Ian Taylor, & Janis Van Der Westhuizen (Eds), South Africa's Multilateral Diplomacy and Global Change: The Limits of Reformism (London: Ashgate, 2001); & (5) Ian Taylor, Stuck in Middle GEAR: South Africa's Post-Apartheid Foreign Relations (London: Praeger, 2001). The author makes the point that much writing about South Africa is still couched in an outdated theoretical framework, as reflected in these books, & the point that a single "homogenizing idea can set the limits of scholarly imagination" -- in this case, globalization. Mills, who is decidedly pro-globalization, is said to use a narrow conceptual range in discussing South Africa within that context. Further, his book is said to be little more than an updating of his "earlier polemic." Bond has an opposite perspective, as he believes that the dispossessed are agents for social change, & that globalization "brazenly contradicts society's strong motivation for more equitable development to redress the massive disparities of apartheid." Adair & Ajulu's book explores the creation of foreign policy, in different African states, in the context of the effects of globalization. The coverage is reportedly uneven, & there is no chapter on Tanzania, which was so active in the liberation movement. The essays edited by Nel et al explore multilateralism as the focus of foreign policy in post-apartheid South Africa. The editors make the point that South Africa has used its high profile to affect multilateral institutions on behalf of more vulnerable countries in areas such as environmental diplomacy, human rights, debt relief, the reform of international trade, & the global campaign to ban land mines. Taylor explains why the new South Africa has embraced globalization but focuses particularly on why multilateralism is embraced so enthusiastically. He demonstrates the emergence of a neoliberal policy, GEAR (for Growth & Economic Recovery Programme), & asks who is benefiting from South Africa's foreign policy, in a work of "genuine contemporary scholarship." These books are said to represent South Africa's unhappy past, & the reviewer also offers comments about works by Rodney Davenport & Christopher Saunders, Jacqueline A. Kalley, Steven D. Gish, Thomas Koelbe, & A. J. Christopher, which are said to represent more conceptual daring. M. S. Northcutt