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The Individual in African History
This volume investigates the development of biographical study in African history and historiography. Consisting of 10 case studies, it is preceded by an introductory prologue, which deals with the relationship between historiography and different forms of biographical study in the context of Western history-writing but especially African (historical and anthropological) studies. The first three case studies deal with the methodological insights of biographical studies for African history. This is followed by three case studies dealing with personas living through fundamental societal transitions, and four case studies focusing on the discursive dimensions of biographical subjects (including religion, cosmology and ideology). Countries or regions discussed include South Africa, Zambia, Gold Coast, Cameroon, Tanganyika, Congo-Kinshasa and the Central African Republic in colonial times. Contributors are Lindie Koorts, Elena Moore, Iva Peša, Paul Glen Grant, Jacqueline de Vries, Duncan Money, Morgan Robinson, Eve Wong, Klaas van Walraven, Erik Kennes.
Eugene de Kock
The blood of several anti-apartheid activists is on Eugene de Kock's hands and for most South Africans he represents prime evil. Is there any humaneness to be found in the man who many call a monster; and how did he come to be an 'assassin for the state' ? Anemari Jansen went in search of answers by looking at De Kock's strict upbringing, his first exposure to gruesome scenes as a young police officer on the East Rand and in the Border War where he became a hunter of people. Jansen had exclusive access to De Kock's family as well as former Koevoet and Vlakplaas colleagues. She paints a picture of a highly intelligent but complex individual who was an outsider since childhood. Jansen also quotes extensively from De Kock's diaries and an unpublished manuscript. In his own words, De Kock is scathingly honest and he doesn\2019t shy away from describing atrocities in detail or identifying the superiors from whom he received his orders. The book sketches an era and the environment in which Vlakplaas took place, but also offers a unique insight into De Kock's soul and his humanity--Publisher's website.
Written Under the Skin
In this book the author argues that a younger generation of South Africans is developing important and innovative ways of understanding South African pasts, and that challenge the narratives that have over the last decades been informed by notions of forgiveness and reconciliation. The author uses the image of history-rich blood to explore these approaches to intergenerational memory. Blood under the skin is a carrier of embodied and gendered histories and using this image, the chapters revisit older archives, as well as analyse contemporary South African cultural and literary forms. The emphasis on blood challenges the privileged status skin has had as explanatory category in thinking about...
Hunting the Seven
In 1986, seven young men were shot and killed by police in Gugulethu in Cape Town. The nation was told they were part of a 'terrorist' MK cell plotting an attack on a police unit. An inquest followed, then a dramatic trial in 1987 and a second inquest in 1989 that again exonerated the police. Finally, ten years later, Eugene de Kock's Vlakplaas unit was exposed at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for having planned and executed the cold-blooded killings. Yet their real agenda remained a mystery. In Hunting the Seven, Beverley Roos-Muller reveals her own decades-long connection to the case and her search for the truth of their deaths that has been shrouded in lies and mystery. Sifting through the evidence, and interviewing many of those involved, Roos-Muller reveals that it was Vlakplaas's only operation in the Western Cape and behind it lay a shocking secret.
African Intelligence Services
This book argues for making African intelligence services front-and-center in studies about historical and contemporary African security. As the first academic anthology on the subject, it brings together a group of international scholars and intelligence practitioners to understand African intelligence services’ post-colonial and contemporary challenges. The book’s eleven chapters survey a diverse collection of countries and provides readers with histories of understudied African intelligence services. The volume examines the intelligence services’ objectives, operations, leaderships, international partners and legal frameworks. The chapters also highlight different methodologies and sources to further scholarly research about African intelligence.
Koevoet
Koevoet (Afrikaans for ‘Crowbar’) tells of the origination and deployment of the South West African Police’s elite counter-insurgency capability during the South African Border War of 1978–1989. Drawing upon previously unpublished sources and from interviews with a number of key personalities, including former members of Koevoet, this volume, the first of two, documents the formation of Koevoet and its early operations up to 1984. Koevoet examines the background and context to the South West African conflict and details the early experiences of the South African Police in seeking to counter SWAPO/PLAN activities. It outlines the tasking assigned to Colonel Hans Dreyer of the South Af...
Special Operations Success
Special Operations Success establishes a new benchmark in military theory in this deeply analytic and innovative work. It answers several pressing questions: How successful have American special operations been over the past quarter-century? Are special forces fated to cycles of expansion and misuse? Will special forces invariably exceed the authorities granted to them because of they are? Is a general theory of special operations feasible given the range of activities and conditions that fall under the category? Kiras' work is based on two decades of practical, teaching, and consulting experience within different special operations communities, and its analysis and conclusions are designed ...
South Africa's Dreams
In the early sixties, South Africa’s colonial policies in Namibia served as a testing ground for many key features of its repressive ‘Grand Apartheid’ infrastructure, including strategies for countering anti-apartheid resistance. Exposing the role that anthropologists played, this book analyses how the knowledge used to justify and implement apartheid was created. Understanding these practices and the ways in which South Africa’s experiences in Namibia influenced later policy at home is also critically evaluated, as is the matter of adjudicating the many South African anthropologists who supported the regime.
South Africa
South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid examines the history of South Africa from 1948 to the present day, covering the introduction of the oppressive policy of apartheid when the Nationalists came to power, its mounting opposition in the 1970s and 1980s, its eventual collapse in the 1990s, and its legacy up to the present day. Fully revised, the third edition includes: new material on the impact of apartheid, including the social and cultural effects of the urbanization that occurred when Africans were forced out of rural areas analysis of recent political and economic issues that are rooted in the apartheid regime, particularly continuing unemployment and the emergence of opposition p...
Political Memory and the Aesthetics of Care
With this nuanced and interdisciplinary work, political theorist Mihaela Mihai tackles several interrelated questions: How do societies remember histories of systemic violence? Who is excluded from such histories' cast of characters? And what are the political costs of selective remembering in the present? Building on insights from political theory, social epistemology, and feminist and critical race theory, Mihai argues that a double erasure often structures hegemonic narratives of complex violence: of widespread, heterogeneous complicity and of "impure" resistances, not easily subsumed to exceptionalist heroic models. In dialogue with care ethicists and philosophers of art, she then sugges...
