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Militarism and Transformation in Southern Africa

Spring 2002

AAS 731; PSC 700 Sec 004;  

Office: Sims Hall,  : 211 

Tuesday 4-7 pm,  HGL 001                                                             

Instructor:   Professor Horace Campbell   Phone,  443-9353 

hgcampbe@maxwell.syr.edu

 

Course Outline

The thrust of this Seminar will be to analyze the issues of militarism in the political process in Southern Africa in the last thirty -five years. There will be an attempt to grasp the links between the warrior traditions of Africa and the impact of expansionism that led to the militarization of the states and society. Questions of patriarchy, masculinity and the role of force in capitalist production in Southern Africa will form the background to studying the destabilization that was unleashed by apartheid. This background will provide the foundation for grasping militarism, destabilization and conventional warfare in the region. A major focus of this course will be to examine the relationship between the forms of modern militarism and the European ideation system. How did the traditions of genocide in Africa inform Modernity and the Holocaust? What are the current manifestations of these ideas as they relate to militarism and the search for a new mode of economic organization in Africa?

 

In so far as the liberation movements assigned themselves the task of ending the colonial relations, there will be an attempt to study how the liberation project differed from the modernization theories of social development. What were the conditions that allowed for the kind of ideological flexibility that moved these societies from questions of social needs to market driven economic policies? How did warfare become a business in the whole region? How did Southern Africa come out of the changed international relations of the cold war? The experiences of warfare, genocide and the current struggles against biological and information warfare will form the main thrust of the understanding of the social forces seeking a new mode of economic organization.

 

The seminar is designed to grasp how changes at the level of ideas affected both the form and content of the organizations committed to ending militarism and unequal economic relations. In this sense the programs of the social forces seeking to transform the region will come in for special scrutiny. The wars in Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo will be considered in the context of the Constitutive Act of the African Union The last section will seek to understand the requirements of peace, reconstruction and transformation in the whole region.

 

 

Course Requirements:

 

Three Book Reviews : Write a critical review of Z. Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust,  Adam Hochschild, Kings Leopold’s Ghost  and Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, Princeton University Press, 2001 with Phillip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow we will be killed along with our children,

 

 Reflection Paper:  5 - 7 page reflection on the relationship between Militarism, peace and reconciliation in South Africa.

 

Major Research Paper 30

 

Evaluation. The grade for the course will be based on class presentations and response to readings (20%,) three book reviews  (15%), Response to Readings (15%) one short reflection paper (10%), participation (10%) and one major research paper (30%) 

 

REQUIRED TEXTS:

 Z. Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, Cornell University Press, 2000

Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost a story of greed, terror, and heroism in colonial Africa, Houghton Mifflin, Boston , 1998

Horace Campbell, The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Model of Liberation: Lessons from Zimbabwe, David Phillip, Cape Town, 2002

Eboe Hutchful and Abdoulaye Bathily, eds., The Military and Militarism in Africa, Codesria Books, 1998

 

Highly Recommended Texts

 

Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2001

Phillip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow we will be killed along with our children,

Horace Campbell, US Security Doctrine and the Africa Crisis Response Initiative, Africa Institute of South Africa 2001

Michael Maren, The Road to Hell, The Free Press, 1998

Vandana Shiva, Biopiracy,  South End Press 1999

 

All other books are on reserve in Bird Library.

 

 

Course Schedule

 

Week 1,  January 15:  Developing a gendered profile of  Southern Africa.

 

Required Readings

 

 “Southern Africa,” in The Cambridge History of Africa, Vol 8, edited by Michael Crowder, Cambridge University Press,

David Harvey, “Reinventing Geography,” New Left Review, No. 4, July/August 2000

Ruth Meena,  (ed) Gender in Southern Africa, SAPES Books, 1993, Chapters 1 and 2, R

Sara Delamont,  “Ghettos and celibacy or, the lion, the witch and the wardrobe, in A Woman’s Place in Education, Avebury, 1996 

“Emplacing Current Trends in Feminist Historical Geography,” by Morin, Karen.M and Berg, Lawrence, D, in Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, December 1999, Vol. 6, Issue, No. 4, p 311

 

Recommended Reading

Guy Arnold and Ruth Weiss, Strategic Highways in Africa, Martin's Press, New York, 1977

Joseph Hanlon, Beggar Your Neighbours : Apartheid Power in Southern Africa,

Indiana University Press, 1987

Gillian Rose, Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1993

 

Week 2, January 22:  Theoretical Questions on Militarism

 

Required Reading

 

Robin Luckham, The Military, Militarisation and Democratisation in Africa: A Survey of Literature and Issues,” in The Military and Militarism in Africa, edited by Eboe Hutchful and Abdoulaye Bathily, Codesria Books, 1998

Mary Kaldor, “Warfare and Capitalism,” in Exterminism and Cold War, edited by E.P. Thompson, Verso Books, London 1982

Patricia McFadden, “Women, War and Militarism,”  SAPEM, March 1991

J. Ann Tickner, “Feminist Perspectives on Peace and World Security in the Post Cold War Era, in Michael Klare, Peace and World Order Studies: A Curriculum Guide, Boulder, Westview Press 1993, Chapters 1, 2 , 3 and 4

 

Recommended Reading

 

J. Cock and Laurie Nathan, Society at War: the Militarization of South African Society, St. Martins Press, 1990

Sun Tzu, The Art of War,

Ian Roxborough, “Clausewitz, and the Sociology of War, British Journal of Sociology, Vol, 1, No. 45. December 1994

 

 

Week 3, January 29:  Militarism and Masculinity: Dodaism in Southern Africa

 

Required Reading

 

Horace Campbell, “Militarism, Masculinity and the War of Ideas,” mimeo

Ali Mazrui, “Warrior Traditions in Africa,” in The Warrior Tradition in Modern Africa,  edited by Ali Mazrui, E. J. Brill, 1977  see especially Section II: The Warrior and Violence

Jacklyn Cock, “Gun, Violence and Masculinity in Contemporary South Africa,” in Changing Men, edited by Robert Morell, Zed Press, London, 2001

“Men amongst Men: Masculinity and Zulu Nationalism in the 1980’s,” Thembisa Waetjen and Gerhard Mare, in Changing Men, edited by Robert Morell, Zed Press, 2001-12-28

 

Recommended Reading

 

War and Gender: How Gender shapes the war system and Vice versa, by Joshua Goldstein, Cambridge University Press 2001

Robert Kaplan, Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos, Random House, New York, 2001

 

Week 4, February 5 :  Fascism , Capitalism and Racism

 

Required Reading

 

Z. Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, Cornell University Press

Martin Kitchen, Fascism, McMillan, London 1976

Karl Liebknecht, Militarism , B. W. Heubsch, 1917 can be seen at this web site

http://raven.cc.ukans.edu/~libsite/wwi-www/Liebknecht/lieb1.html

K. Marx, Capital, Volume 1, Chapters 13, 14 and 15

John Saul, Voltaire's bastards : the dictatorship of reason in the West, Free Press, McMillan, 1992

 

Recommended Reading

 

Tilman Dedering, “The German Herero War of 1904: Revisionism of Genocide or Imaginary Historiography,” Journal of Southern African Studies, Volume 19, NO. 1 March 1993

Nicolas Poulantzas, Fascism and dictatorship : the Third International and the problem of fascism, New left Books, 1974

Jan Pieterse, White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1992, Chapter 5

F. Kapra, The Turning Point, Bantam Books, 1982, Chapter 1.

Walter Rodney, “The Imperialist Partitioning of Africa,” in Monthly Review, April 1970

Bruce Vandervort, Wars of Imperial Conquest in Africa, Indiana University Press, 1998, Chapter 5

 

Recommended Video: Basil Davidson, “The Bible and the Gun” Africa, Episode No. V

 

 

Week 5, February 12: Militarism and The Role of Force in Production in Southern Africa

 

Required Reading

 

Apartheid: the Facts., International Defense and Aid Fund, 1991

Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's ghost : a story of greed, terror, and heroism in colonial Africa, Houghton Mifflin, Boston , 1998

The Apartheid War Machine, IDAF, 1983

Ruth First, Black Gold: The Mozambican Miner, proletarian and peasant, St, Martins Press, 1983  pages 12-100

Duncan Innes, The Anglo American Corporation and the rise of Modern South Africa, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1984

 

Recommended Reading

 

Bernard Magubane, The Political Economy of Race and Class in South Africa, Monthly Review Press, 1979

Eddie Webster, Cast in a Racial Mould, Ravan Press Johannesburg, 1985 Chapters 1 & 2

Peter Abrahams, Mine Boy, Heinemann Educational Books, 1963

 

 

Week 6, February 19: Decolonization and Militarism

 

Required Readings

 

Amilcar Cabral, Return to the Source, Monthly Review Press, 1974, See Chapter on National Liberation and Culture

Horace Campbell, The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Model of Liberation: Lessons From Zimbabwe, Chapters 2-4 and 15

Basil Davidson, The Peoples Cause: a history of guerillas in Africa, Longman 1981

Joseph Hanlon, Mozambique: The Revolution under Fire, Zed Books 1984, pages 1-86

Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, Grove Press, 1961, Chapter 1

Women’s Liberation in the Zimbabwean Revolution, Materials From the ZANU Women’s Seminar, Maputo, Mozambique, May 1979

 

Recommended Reading

 

Basil Davidson, In the eye of the storm; Angola's people, Doubleday, 1981

Horace Campbell, “War, Reconstruction and Dependence in Mozambique, Third World Quarterly, October 1984,

The African liberation Reader, edited by Aquino De Braganza and Immanuel Wallerstein,  London : Zed Press, 1982.

Joseph Hanlon, Mozambique: Who Calls The Shots, Indiana University, 1993

Stott, Leda,  “Women and the Armed Struggle For Independence in Zimbabwe,  Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh, 1980

 

Recommended Video:  Flame

 

 

Week 7, February 26: Uniting the military traditions of liberation fighters with the colonial military traditions

 

Required Reading

 

Horace Campbell. The Integration of the Armed Forces in Zimbabwe in The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Model of Liberation,

Eboe Hutchful and Abdoulaye Bathily,eds., The Military and Militarism in Africa, Chapters 5 and 8.

Abiodun Alao, The Politics and Diplomacy of Security in Zimbabwe, PhD Thesis, Kings College London, Chapters 1 and 2. (mimeo)

Martin Rupiah, “Demobilization and Integration: Operation Merger and the Zimbabwe National Defence Forces,1980-1987,  Security Review, Vol. 4. No. 3, 1995

Greg Mills, “BMATT and Military Integration in Southern Africa,” in Southern African Defence Review, No.2, 1992 pages 1-10

 

Recommended Reading

 

N. Bhebe and T. Ranger, Soldiers and Zimbabwe’s Liberation War, Volume 1,

University of Zimbabwe Publications, pages 104-117

N. Bhebe and T. Ranger, Soldiers and Zimbabwe’s Liberation War, Volume 2, pages 147-191,

Susan Carruthers, Winning Hearts and Minds: British Governments, the Media and Colonial Counterinsurgency, Leicester University Press, Chapter 3 

 

Week 8,  March 5:   What Can we Learn from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission:  Is it possible to have reconciliation without justice?

http://dfn.org/voices/safrica/trc/trc.htm

This web site contains the files of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Students are expected to download one volume and develop a critical analysis of this volume.

The main themes to be analyzed are (a) militarism, (b) the scope of analysis of liberation movements  (c) cross border raids (especially the wars in Mozambique and Angola), (d) biological warfare (with legacies from Rhodesia) and (e) police violence and use of third force (to be linked to theory and practice of low intensity operations)

 

Suggested Reading

 

Apartheid’s Poison Legacy, http://www.caq.com/CAQ/caq63/caq63apartheid.html

http://www.detnews.com/1998/nation/9808/01/08010066.htm

http://www.mg.co.za/mg/news/97nov1/14nov-basson.html

 

Students are encouraged to read other sources in relation to Project Coast.

 

Week 9, March 12 :  Midterm Break

 

 

Week 10,  March 19 The Military Destabilization of Southern Africa 1975-1994
 
Required Reading

 

Joseph Hanlon, Beggar Your Neighbours: Apartheid’ Power in Southern Africa, Indiana University Press, 1986 pages 27-67

Reginald H. Green, Killing the Dream: The Political and Human Economy of War in Sub Saharan Africa,  IDS Discussion Paper, No. 238, 1987

Joseph Hanlon, Mozambique, Who Calls the Shots, University of Indiana Press,

Minter, William, Apartheid’s contras : an inquiry into the roots of war in Angola and Mozambique  N.J.  Zed Books, 1996

 

Recommended Reading

 

Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations, Subversion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping, Stackpole Books, 1971

Jack Nelson Pallmeyer, War against the poor: Low intensity conflict and Christian Faith, Maryknoll Books, 1989

Richard E. Lapchick, Oppression and Resistance: The struggle of women in Southern Africa, Greenwood press, 1982

Edward Herman and Gerry O’Sullivan, The Terrorism Industry, Pantheon Books, 1989

J. Cock and L. Nathan, Society at War: The Militarization of South Africa, St. Martins Press, 1990

 

Suggested Reading

 

Johnson, Phyllis, Apartheid Terrorism: the destabilization report, Indiana University Press, Indiana, 1989

 

Students are encouraged to view the video, The Hidden Hand

 
 

Week 11  March 26 Cuito Cuanavale

 

Required Readings

 

Horace Campbell, The Siege of Cuito Cuanavale, Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1990

Horace Campbell, War and Peace in Angola, Zimbabwe Institute of Development Studies 1995

Horace Campbell, Militarism, Warfare and the Search For Peace in Angola, in The Uncertain Promise of Southern Africa, edited by York Bradshaw and Stephen N. Ndegwa, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 2000

Michael Wolfers and Jane Beregol, Angola on the Frontline, Zed Books

William Minter, “The USA and the War in Angola,” Review of African Political Economy, March 1991,

Victoria Brittain, Cuba and Southern Africa, New Left Review, Nov-Dec 1988

 

 

Recommended Reading

 

Daniel Spikes, Angola and the Politics of Intervention, MacFarland 1994,

Keith Somerville, Angola: Politics, Economics and society, L. Rienner Publishers, 1986

Horace Campbell, “War and the Negotiation of Gender Identities in Angola,” in Mai Palmberg, ed, National Identity and Democracy, Nordic Institute of African Studies, Upsala, 2000

Angolan Women Building the Future: From National liberation to Women’s Emancipation, published by the Organization of Angolan Women and translated by Marga Holness, Zed Books 1984

John Stockwell, In Search of Enemies, Norton 1978

 

Suggested Reading

 

Chester Crocker, High Noon in Southern Africa: Keeping Peace in a Rough Neighborhood, Norton, 1992

 

 

Week 11,  April  2: The end of Apartheid and the Political Compromise

 

Required Reading

 

Horace Campbell, “The Popular Demand for the Dismantling of the Apartheid War Machine and the Conversion of the Military Industrial Complex,” The Military and Militarism in Africa, edited by Eboe Hutchful and Abdoulaye Bathily, Codesria Books, 1998

Robert Price, The Crisis of the Apartheid State, Oxford University Press 1991, pages 152-296

Allister Sparks: Tomorrow is another country: the inside story of South Africa's road to change, New York : Hill and Wang, 1995.

Jamie Geldenhuys, A Generals story: From an era of war to Peace, Jonathan Ball,1995

Horace Campbell, “Challenging the Apartheid State From Below,” in Popular Struggles For Democracy in Africa, Zed Books 1987

 

Recommended Readings

 

Sarah Nutall and Carl Coetzee, Negotiating the Past: The Making of Memory in South Africa, Oxford University Press 1998

Martin Meredith , Nelson Mandela: A Biography,  St. Martins Press, 1998

Joe Slovo, Joe Slovo: An Unfinished Autobiography, Ocean Press, 1997

Ready to Govern: ANC Policy Guidelines for a Democratic South Africa, 1992

 

Suggested Reading

 

Anthony Ginsberg, South Africa’s Future, MacMillan, 1998

Heribert Adam, F.Van Zyl Slabbert and Kogila Moodley, Comrades in Business, Tafelberg, 1997

South Africa : Time Running Out, Study Commission of the US Policy Towards South Africa,  University of California Press, 1991 pages 310-322

Seymour Melman, The Demilitarized Society, Harvest Press, Montreal 1990

Noam Chomsky, Power in the Global Era, NLR No.230, 1998

 

Week 12, April 9:  Militarism and Genocide: Lessons From Central Africa

 

Required Readings

 

Phillip Gourevitch,  We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow we will be killed along with our children,

Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, Princeton University Press, 2001

Malvern, Linda, A people betrayed : the role of the West in Rwanda's genocide, Zed Press, London 2002,

 

Recommended Readings

 

Africa Rights, Death Despair and Defiance, London, 1995

Archie Mafeje, The Theory and Ethnography of African Social Formations, Codesria, 1991

The International Response to Conflict and Genocide: lessons from the Rwanda Experience published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Denmark 1996

http://www.reliefweb.int/library/nordic/index.html

Rene Lemarchand, “Genocide in the Great Lakes: Which Genocide? Whose genocide?”

African Studies Review, Vol., 41, No. 1, April 1998, pages 3-16

See also review by Wole Soyinka, New York Review of Books, October 3, 1998

Africa Rights, Rwanda: Not So Innocent, 1997  

Video: Triumph of Evil

 

 Week 13, April 16:  Militarism and War In Central Africa

 

Required Readings

 

Horace Campbell, The Deployment of Zimbabwean Troops in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Model of Liberation

Horace Campbell, Notes on the Pace of the Struggle For a new Mode of Politics in the Congo, ACAS Bulletin, October 1998

Herbert Weiss, War and Peace in the Congo, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Uppsala, Sweden. See on the web at http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/AD_Issues/amdipl_16/weiss/weiss_congo8.html

Wamba dia Wamba, “Protracted Political Crisis, War and Militarism in the Region of Central Africa and the Great Lakes, (mimeo)

Mwesiga Baregu, Crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sapes Books, 1999

 

 

Recommended

War in the Congo, International Crisis Group, April 2000

 

Week 14, April 23 The African Crisis Response Initiative

 

Required Readings,

 

Horace Campbell, US Security Doctrine and the Africa Crisis Response Initiative, Africa Institute of South Africa.

Michael Maren, The Road to Hell, The Free Press, 1998

Daniel Volman, “Humanitarian Militarism: The U.S. Role in African Peacekeeping and Peace-Enforcement,” Paper presented at the 36th annual meeting of ASA, Boston, 1993

Vandana Shiva, Biopiracy, South End Press, 1997

 

Week 15 April 30 Transition and transformation in Southern Africa

 

Required Reading

 

“The Social Movements in the Periphery: An end to national Liberation? In  Samir Amin, Giovanni Arrighi, Andre Gunder Frank and Immanuel Wallerstien,

Transforming the Revolution: Social Movements and the World System, Monthly Review Press, 1990

Archie Mafeje, In Search of an Alternative, SAPES Books, 1992, Chapter 1

Paulo Gerdes,  Women Art and Geometry in Southern Africa, Africa World Press, 1998

Conclusion

Horace Campbell, “From Regional Military Destabilization to Regional Military Cooperation and Peace in Southern Africa,” in Peace and Security in Southern Africa, edited by Ibbo Mandaza, SAPES Books, 1997

 
Recommended Readings

John Gilliot and Manjit Kumar, Science and the Retreat from Reason, Monthly Review Press, 1998

 

 

Suggested Reading

Bandyoppadhyaya Jayanttauja, Mao Tse Tung and Ghandi, Perspectives on Social Transformation, Allied Publishers, Bombay,  Chapter 2

Thandika Mkandawire, “Globalization and Africa’s Unfinished Agenda,  United Nations Research Institute For Development,  mimeo

 

Research Paper Due

 

 

Students are encouraged to use the journals that will strengthen their participation in the discussions in this course. The following journals are from Southern Africa that are particularly useful:

 

South Africa Labour Bulletin

Journal of Contemporary Southern African Studies,

Transformation

Southern Africa Political Economy Series (SAPEM)

 

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