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- Convenors:
-
Lennart Bolliger
(Utrecht University)
Salvador Forquilha (Institute for Social and Economic Studies - IESE)
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- Chair:
-
Salvador Forquilha
(Institute for Social and Economic Studies - IESE)
- Discussants:
-
Lennart Bolliger
(Utrecht University)
Corinna Jentzsch (Leiden University)
Nikkie Wiegink (Utrecht University)
- Format:
- Roundtable
- Streams:
- Politics and International Relations (x) Violence and Conflict Resolution (y)
- Location:
- Neues Seminargebäude, Seminarraum 11
- Start time:
- 1 June, 2023 at
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This roundtable presents new books on soldiers, rebels, and militias in central and southern Africa, and what insights can be drawn from them for contemporary and future armed conflicts in the region.
Long Abstract:
Armed conflicts leave behind political legacies that matter not only for those who were affected by the violence, but also for those who participated in the violence. This roundtable aims to celebrate new books on wartime and post-war experiences of soldiers, rebels, and militias in central and southern Africa and discuss the legacies of combatant experiences for contemporary and future African politics. It invites authors of recently published books from different disciplines such as history, political science, and anthropology to compare different theoretical approaches and methods. The participants are invited to reflect on their own work and that of the other participants in relation to contemporary armed conflicts and to tease out necessary avenues for future research on armed group formation, organization, and demobilization, and how these processes shape post-war politics and the future of armed conflict.
We aim to organize a roundtable conversation with four to five authors of recently published monographs and books about armed actors in central and southern Africa. Confirmed participants are Lennart Bolliger (Apartheid’s Black Soldiers: Un-national Wars and Militaries in Southern Africa), Corinna Jentzsch (Violent Resistance: Militia Formation and Civil War in Mozambique), and Nikkie Wiegink (Former Guerrillas in Mozambique).
Accepted contributions:
Session 1Contribution short abstract:
Why do communities form militias to defend themselves against violence during civil war? Using interviews with former combatants and civilians and archival material from fieldwork in Mozambique, Violent Resistance explains the timing, location and process through which communities form militias.
Contribution long abstract:
Why do communities form militias to defend themselves against violence during civil war? Using original interviews with former combatants and civilians and archival material from extensive fieldwork in Mozambique, Corinna Jentzsch's Violent Resistance explains the timing, location and process through which communities form militias. Jentzsch shows that local military stalemates characterized by ongoing violence allow civilians to form militias that fight alongside the government against rebels. Militias spread only to communities in which elites are relatively unified, preventing elites from coopting militias for private gains. Crucially, militias that build on preexisting social conventions are able to resonate with the people and empower them to regain agency over their lives. Jentzsch's innovative study brings conceptual clarity to the militia phenomenon and helps us understand how wartime civilian agency, violent resistance, and the rise of third actors beyond governments and rebels affect the dynamics of civil war, on the African continent and beyond.
Contribution short abstract:
The ethnography Former Guerrillas in Mozambique describes the trajectories of former Renamo combatants in Mozambique. The book focuses on how Renamo veterans have navigated unstable and sometimes dangerous social and political environments during and after the war.
Contribution long abstract:
This contribution focuses on the ethnography Former Guerrillas in Mozambique describes the trajectories of former Renamo combatants in Mozambique. The book focuses on how Renamo veterans have navigated unstable and sometimes dangerous social and political environments during and after the war. The book is based on fourteen months of fieldwork conducted over fifteen years after the war ended. It offers a critique of a motion of reintegration that assumes that the lives of former combatants are shaped by a break with society when joining the armed group and subsequently by a break with the past when demobilising. Former combatants' motivations, experiences, and interactions are not necessarily characterised by a rigid separation from their Renamo past, but rather comprise a mixture of ruptures and continuations of relationships and networks, including, families, the spiritual world, fellow former combatants, political parties, and the state.
Contribution short abstract:
Focusing on three case studies of predominantly Black units of apartheid South Africa's security forces, this book investigates how and why these soldiers participated in South Africa’s security forces and considers the legacies of that involvement.
Contribution long abstract:
In anticolonial struggles across the African continent, tens of thousands of African soldiers served in the militaries of colonial and settler states. In southern Africa, they often made up the bulk of these militaries and, in some contexts, far outnumbered those who fought in the liberation movements’ armed wings. Despite these soldiers' significant impact on the region’s military and political history, this dimension of southern Africa’s anticolonial struggles has been almost entirely ignored in previous scholarship. Black troops from Namibia and Angola spearheaded apartheid South Africa’s military intervention in their countries’ respective anticolonial war and postindependence civil war. Drawing from oral history interviews and archival sources, this book challenges the common framing of these wars as struggles of national liberation fought by and for Africans against White colonial and settler-state armies. Focusing on three case studies of predominantly Black units commanded by White officers, this book investigates how and why these soldiers participated in South Africa’s security forces and considers the legacies of that involvement. In tackling these questions, it rejects the common tendency to categorize the soldiers as “collaborators” and “traitors” and reveals the un-national facets of anticolonial struggles. Finally, the book’s unique analysis of apartheid military culture shows how South Africa’s military units were far from monolithic and instead developed distinctive institutional practices, mythologies, and concepts of militarized masculinity.
Contribution short abstract:
This paper presents an analysis of individual agency/trajectories of Namibia's PLAN ex-fighters from 1989 through 2018, in order to ascertain to what extent they have reintegrated into society.
Contribution long abstract:
In the past, Disarmament Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) has been measured for its success or failure based on programmes. This method has proved to be flawed, as it does not focus on the individual agency and/or “lived experiences” of ex-fighters but rather on whether programmatic ‘goals’ have been achieved, thereby giving DDR programme sponsors/donors an incomplete picture. Previously scholars on Namibia’s reintegration have focused on the ‘delivery’ of reintegration policies by the Namibian government and the collective militant agency of veterans of the liberation struggle. The problem with such an approach is it generalises the experiences of ex-fighters missing out on their unique individual agency, which when mapped, gives a more accurate account of their reintegration progress. Therefore, this paper presents an analysis of individual agency/trajectories of Peoples Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) ex-fighters for almost 30 years (1989-2018) in order to ascertain to what extent they have reintegrated into society/communities as opposed to analysing their reintegration from a programmatic perspective or generalising their collective experience. These life histories were obtained through semi-structured interviews that mapped their individual trajectories from 1989 through 2018. Through mapping individual trajectories of PLAN ex-fighters the study reveals the limitations of reintegration programming and the broader DDR framework, which privileges its own measures of analysis at the expense of understanding how people make lives in the aftermath of war with or without assistance from reintegration programmes. Thus, they suggest that successful reintegration hinges, to a great extent, on individual agency and one’s ability to adapt and not necessarily on benefits from reintegration programmes.