Rethinking militarism in post-apartheid South Africa

This paper argues that contemporary South Africa is marked by a co-existence of both old and new forms of militarism. It tries to move beyond the statist conception of militarism in much of the scholarly literature in order to examine social relations more broadly, and the appropriation of the means and instruments of violence by non-state groups. The paper argues that a shallow and uneven process of state demilitarisation was underway in South Africa from 1990 in the form of reductions in military expenditure, weapons holdings, force levels, demobilisation, employment in arms production and base closures. However, this has had contradictory consequences. The failure to provide for the effective social integration of ex-combatants throughout the Southern African region, as well as ineffective disarmament in post-conflict peace building, has provided an impetus to a 'privatised militarism'. This is evident in three related processes: new forms of violence, the commoditisation of security, through the growth of private security firms and, most importantly, the proliferation of small arms. It is argued that small arms are highly racialised and linked to a militarised conception of citizenship. This feeds into a militarist nationalism, which claims a powerful army as an indicator of state power, which helps to explain a process of re-militarisation - evident in the R60 billion re-armament programme and increasing reliance on the military as an instrument of foreign policy since 1998. The paper concludes by emphasizing the need for a regional approach to security as a further corrective to a narrow, statist focus on the South African National Defence Force

William Cock: Hero of Villain?

The answer to this question lies in whether the reader believes that the present social order in South Africa is just and sustainable, and how the colonialism contributed to that order. The question that follows is whether the 1820 settlers warrant our contempt or admiration? An honest answer involves discarding the conventional view of them as a homogenous social category. Instead, we need to recognize that they included very different people, some of whom brought indentured servants with them, some were professional people, but the majority of the settlers were the victims of a heartless colonial project

Black and white women: a socio-historical study of domestic workers and their employers in the Eastern Cape

Domestic service constitutes one of the largest sources of employment for black women in South Africa. Yet it is a largely unstudied occupation. There has been no previous investigation of domestic workers in the Eastern Cape, and to date only two comprehensive studies of domestic workers in other areas of South Africa. This neglect is significant, for such inquiry involves questioning the accepted pattern of inequalities on which the entire social order is based