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Traditional Leadership and Democratisation in Southern Africa
What are the impacts of ethnically based, traditional political institutions on democratic state and nation building in Southern Africa and how do heterogeneous sources of legitimacy affect the prospects of long-term democratic regime consolidation? What are the impacts of "traditionalism" employed for purposes of party-political mobilization? An indicator for the political influence of traditional leadership in Southern Africa is the fact that a considerable number of democratically elected politicians in high office originate from aristocratic families, representing hereditary traditional leadership structures for centuries. This is evident for the charismatic founding president of the new South Africa; Nelson Mandela, as well as for his adversary, the prime minister-in-office, Mangosuthu Buthelezi. The careful reconsideration of this "state behind the state" has been identified as crucial, in this study, to make any realistic assessments of the prospects for sustainable democratization in Southern African countries in the near future.
A Far-Away War
South Africa's armed forces invaded Angola in 1975, setting off a war that had consequences for the whole region that are still felt today. A Far-Away War contributes to a wider understanding of this war in Angola and Namibia. The book does not only look at the war from an "e;old"e; South African (Defence Force) perspective, but also gives a voice to participants "e;on the other side"e; - emphasising the role of the Cubans and Russians. This focus is supplemented by the inclusion of many never-before-published photographs from Cuban and Russian archives, and a comprehensive bibliography.
Democracy and Governance Review
Authoritarian regimes of various sorts have crumbled worldwide to give way to liberal constitutional democracies. Prerequisites for the consolidation of the new democracies are regular free and fair elections, granting political parties legitimate authority and citizens protection by the rule of law.
Discrimination through Language in Africa?
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.
Guarding the Guardians
The relationship between civil society and the armed forces is an essential part of any polity, democratic or otherwise, because a military force is after all a universal feature of social systems. Despite significant progress moving towards democracy among some African countries in the past decade, all too many African militaries have yet to accept core democratic principles regulating civilian authority over the military. This book explores the theory of civil-military relations and moves on to review the intrusion of the armed forces in African politics by looking first into the organization and role of the army in pre-colonial and colonial eras, before examining contemporary armies and t...
Freedom of Religion at Stake
How can freedom of religion protect the dignity of every human being and safeguard the well-being of creation? This question arises when considering the competing claims among faith traditions, states, and persons. Freedom of religion or belief is a basic human right, and yet it is sometimes used to undermine other human rights. This volume seeks to unpack and wrestle with some of these challenges. In order to do so scholars were invited from different contexts in Africa and Europe to write about freedom of religion from various angles. How should faith traditions in a minority position be protected against majority claims and what is the responsibility of the religious communities in this t...
Producing African Futures
The cumulative implications for Africans of the neoliberal processes (market speculation, shifts in sites of production, new modes of consumption, redefinition of the relation between states and their citizenry) cannot be reduced to single parameters. Three themes are central: the neoliberal production of personhood, the crises of youth and the moral panic in which so many of the wider reforms are registered in experience. With contributions on marriage payments, Muslim saints, popular theatre, homosexuality, ritual haunts, domestic reproduction, masculine fantasy, poetic justice, spirit possession and corruption.
The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa
The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was set up to deal with the human rights violations of apartheid during the years 1960-1994. However, as Wilson shows, the TRC's restorative justice approach to healing the nation 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. While a religious constituency largely embraced the commission's religious-redemptive language of reconciliation, Wilson 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. It ends on a call for more cautious and realistic expectations about what human rights institutions can achieve in democratizing countries.
Qualitative Methods in Military Studies
This book examines the methodology of qualitative research in military studies. Since the end of the Cold War, the number of studies on military and society has grown substantially in substance, size and impact. However, only a tiny part of this bibliography deals in depth with the research methods used, especially in relation to qualitative methods. The data that form the basis of the researchers' analyses are often presented as if they were immediately available, rather than as a product of interaction between the researcher and those who participated in the research. Comprising essays by international scholars, the volume discusses the methodological questions raised by the use of qualita...
Religion, Politics, and Identity in a Changing South Africa
What is the role of religion in society? In the wake of September 11, public intellectuals provided easy answers. According to some, religion was the problem, others commented, religion was the solution. Generally, public debate about the force of religion in society has been organized by either/or propositions. Religion is a force for either freedom or bondage, for either peace or war, for either mutual recognition or antagonistic polarization. Analysis of religion and social change has also tended to be framed in terms of oppositions that inform research agendas and public policy. In this book, authors from South Africa, the United States of America, the Netherlands, and Germany test these oppositions.
