Brazil and South Africa: the ‘odd couple’ of the South Atlantic?

Exploring the complexity of South Africa's and Brazil's ‘like-mindedness’ at the regional, multilateral, and bilateral levels, this article argues that shared middle power roles traceable to the pre-Cold War era and beyond set the scene for a great deal of political complementarity and cooperation at the multilateral level where Brazil and South Africa's shared identities drive an interest in reforming global governance processes. This complementarity does not, however, always spill over to the bilateral level, where trans-societal linkages are still relatively limited compared with state-to-state interactions.     

Does the well-being of ‘embedded’ staff affect programme performance? The case of the IGAD initiative in South Sudan

South–South Cooperation is an emerging trend in international development assistance. Since 2011, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) initiative in South Sudan has been one of the most comprehensive attempts at post-conflict capacity development through South–South Cooperation, in terms of both scope and level of funding. This paper looks at the well-being of civil servant support officers deployed under the IGAD initiative, and the relationship between well-being and project performance. The paper explores assumptions underpinning South–South Cooperation and seeks to establish a better understanding of well-being and its impact on project performance. The paper also examines whether the second phase of the initiative has adequately addressed various challenges identified in the first phase. The paper finds that well-being, although often overlooked, has been critical to programme success in the IGAD initiative.     

Twenty-Five Years of Japanese Peacekeeping Operations and the Self-Defense Forces’ Mission in South Sudan

Japanese participation in Peacekeeping Operations began in the balance between Constitutional and other legal constraints and demand for a larger international role in the post-Cold War era. The success of participation in the PKO in Cambodia and East Timor (UNTAC and UNTAET) created opportunities for further participation because of gradual acceptance of the participation of Self-Defense Forces (SDF) in UN PKOs. However, these successes did not change the fundamental constraints of the conditions for participation, namely the Five Principles on PKO participation. The arrival of the second Abe Administration, whose policy objective is to proactively contribute to peace, increased the expectation of Japan taking a much larger role in the UN PKOs, but the SDF participation South Sudan (UNMISS), which faced difficulties due to the lack of a firm ceasefire agreement and sudden breakout of civil war, raised questions of whether Abe’s policy was too aggressive. With the establishment of Peace and Security legislation, more proactive missions can be taken, but the necessity of national debate for building consensus about participating in PKOs still remains.     

South Africa's maritime power in the Indian Ocean Rim∗

The article assesses South Africa's maritime power in the Indian Ocean. It is argued that South Africa needs a credible navy to exercise power and influence in support of foreign policy imperatives in the Indian Ocean. The maritime potential of other states which may have an impact on South Africa's interests is examined, including Australia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan and Kenya and, from outside the region, the United States, the United Kingdom and France. The contrast between the growth and modernisation of other navies and the contraction and ageing of the South African Navy is highlighted. It is concluded that these developments leave South Africa strategically vulnerable.     

From Bandung to Brasilia: IBSA and the political lineage of South–South cooperation

This article aims to trace South–South cooperation political lineages connecting the Non-Aligned Movement and the IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) Forum. In order to determine whether IBSA could be considered the ‘heir’ to Bandung's principles, we analyse the concepts of ‘Third World’ and ‘Global South’ as well as their current applicability, the interpretations provided by existing literature on the IBSA grouping, and its member countries' shared views on different issues of the international agenda. The article also considers the historical evolution of ‘Southern’ diplomatic thought and actions. IBSA's actions and history, as well as its members, are studied to grasp how they are related to the Third World movement in the Cold War.     

From the Subject of Evil to the Evil Subject: “Cultural Difference” in Postapartheid South African Crime Fiction

This article takes up the question of “crime writing” and rejoins the debate around whether such literature stands in for the “political novel” in postapartheid South Africa. What social function might crime writing be serving? Research by political economists and cultural anthropologists suggests that acts of writing in “social detection” mode (rather than “crime writing”) serve as an allegory for occulted sociopolitical conditions. Cultural difference is seen, once again, to play a pivotal role in the legitimation of power, and writers in the detection mode are correspondingly seen to be probing the possibility of a resurgence of “bad” difference. This notion, it is argued, is a key differentiator in an otherwise murky scene in which the borderline between licit and illicit, and right and wrong, has become obscure. While many South African writers are brought into the discussion, including but not restricted to crime authors, a key novel by leading crime writer Deon Meyer is read as a case study to illustrate the more general points made in the article.     

The BRICS and the South Atlantic: Emerging arena for South–South cooperation

Over the past decade, power dynamics within the South Atlantic region have undergone significant changes. While the area has historically been dominated by North–South ties, both in terms of material flows and with respect to political influence, more recently there has been a surge in cooperation between developing countries within this space. As trade, investment and other forms of exchange and dialogue increase among actors from within the region (notably between South America and Africa) and with states located outside the region, the BRICS countries become more relevant to the South Atlantic. Individually, they have become relevant players in the South Atlantic's economic, political and security dimensions. Collectively, as inter-BRICS flows and political coordination intensify, new configurations of cooperation emerge within the South Atlantic. These initiatives suggest that rising powers are contributing towards making the South Atlantic – long dominated by North–South ties – a space where South–South cooperation and norms predominate.     

Kopano Matlwa’s Coconut and the Dialectics of Race in South Africa: Interrogating Images of Whiteness and Blackness in Black Literature and Culture

The public outcry against President Jacob Zuma’s labeling of black ownership of pet dogs as fundamentally “unAfrican” in 2012 and the academic debates around Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s proposal in 2011 for a 1% reparative wealth tax on whites is further evidence of the continued necessity of whiteness studies today, despite South Africa’s independence from a racist Afrikaner regime and its movement towards a nonracist society. Yet, the authority, agency, and normative value of whiteness continue to work covertly within an intellectual critique embedded in standardized interrogations of images and imaginations of race and culture. Kopano Matlwa’s popular debut novel, Coconut, is a necessary, self-reflexive commentary on the interdependent nature of racial inquiry. While critics typically read the novel as resoundingly critical of contemporary blackness, they fail to see its simultaneous evocation of the necessarily porous, performative, and continuously evolving character of race and culture generally. This paper acknowledges Matlwa’s concern with a superficial postapartheid blackness, but also argues that Coconut’s complex invocation of black culture exposes the impossibility of imaging and imagining blackness without imaging and imagining whiteness. In the continued satirical fetishization of whiteness, racial essentialism is destabilized and whiteness is positioned as an inevitable mirror on and of blackness. As such, the paper simultaneously questions the efficacy of “whiteness” studies that suggest the possibility of establishing separate and exclusive studies on race and culture.     

“Zones of indistinction” and visions of post-reconciliation South Africa in District 9

In this article, I explore the ways in which District 9 reflects South Africa’s current socio-political transition through the problematical representation of the film’s eponymous slum and its impoverished inhabitants as well as its protagonist, Wikus van der Merwe. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s influential ideas of biopolitics, I demonstrate the ways in which the film provides a compelling critique of the effects of neoliberal capitalism on post-apartheid transition and South Africa’s complex geopolitical landscape. In this regard, I analyze how the slum figures as a “zone of indistinction” where political and economic forces combine to produce the paradoxical conditions in which impoverished South Africans are included in a democratic social contract, but are simultaneously excluded from the socioeconomic benefits that it promises.     

Trends of Marxian Ratios in South Korea, 1980–2014

ABSTRACT

This article explores the dynamics and contradictions of capital accumulation in South Korea from 1980 to 2014 by analysing the rates of surplus value and profit and criticises two theses of financialisation and income-led growth. The rate of surplus value soared after 2000 because the real wage growth was contained by the neo-liberal onslaught against workers. The profit rate consistently declined after 1987, paving the way for the 1997 crisis and its main driver was the rising organic composition of capital. After the 1997 crisis, the profit rate rebounded for six years thanks to the intensified exploitation of workers. From 2002 until the 2008 global financial crisis, the rate of profit dropped again. However, contrary to the financialisation thesis, there has been no substantial transfer of surplus value from the real sector to the financial sector. Our results also show that the accumulation rate determined income distribution, not vice versa, contradicting the income-led growth strategy, now popular among the Korean progressives. Marxian macro-dynamics is operating as usual in Korea.     

The undoing of a unique relationship? Peace and security in the EU–South Africa Strategic Partnership

ABSTRACT

When the European Union (EU) and South Africa acceded to a strategic partnership, they expanded into new areas of partnership. One of these areas was peace and security, which is the focus of this article. The article argues that, although there appears to be a shared understanding of what security means, the strategic partnership has not been utilised significantly to further this understanding in practice. This is largely due to the EU's preferences for a continental, multilateral approach over the bilateralism of a strategic partnership. At the same time, South Africa sees its strategic partnership with the EU as being outside of its broader commitment to regional security. As a result the peace and security element of the strategic partnership has not been leveraged effectively despite several entry points for action. The article thus concludes that both the EU and South Africa need to re-think the current arrangement.     

Deliberative democracy and the politics of traditional leadership in South Africa: A case of despotic domination or democratic deliberation?

A heated debate developed in South Africa as to the meaning of ‘deliberative democracy’. This debate is fanned by the claims of ‘traditional leaders’ that their ways of village-level deliberation and consensus-oriented decision-making are not only a superior process for the African continent as it evolves from pre-colonial tradition, but that it represents a form of democracy that is more authentic than the Western version. Proponents suggest that traditional ways of deliberation are making a come-back because imported Western models of democracy that focus on the state and state institutions miss the fact that in African societies state institutions are often seen as illegitimate or simply absent from people's daily lives. In other words, traditional leadership structures are more appropriate to African contexts than their Western rivals. Critics suggest that traditional leaders, far from being authentic democrats, are power-hungry patriarchs and authoritarians attempting to both re-invent their political, social and economic power (frequently acquired under colonial and apartheid rule) and re-assert their control over local-level resources at the expense of the larger community. In this view, the concept of deliberative democracy is being misused as a legitimating device for a politics of patriarchy and hierarchy, which is the opposite of the meaning of the term in the European and US sense. This article attempts to contextualise this debate and show how the efforts by traditional leaders to capture an intermediary position between rural populations and the state is fraught with conflicts and contradictions when it comes to forming a democratic state and society in post-apartheid South Africa.     

The Bedouins in the Galilee in the War of Independence of Israel 1948–1950

The relations of the Bedouins with the Jewish population during the War of Independence were very complex. The Bedouins were both opponents and friends. Bedouin groups helped the Jews in their struggle against the Palestinian national movement and against the Arab armies like Arab-al-Hib. Before the foundation of the state, these Bedouins had already participated in the protection of the security of the Jewish population. They supplied intelligence on events of the Arab and Palestinian sides, and also fought by the side of the Jews in the War of Independence, but at that time other groups joined the Palestinian national movement and took part in the struggle against the Jewish population, more so after the declaration of the partition plan in the United Nations. Subsequently, Bedouin fighting gangs were established and they joined the Palestinian struggle with the Jewish population.

The Bedouin positions during the war had implications for their fate in the State of Israel. The War of Independence allowed a significant part of the Bedouin tribes to escape to the neighbouring Arab states – Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. Many of the Bedouin tribes that escaped did so as they were connected with fighting with the Arab gangs and the Arab Liberation Army. The Bedouins who were in the Zionist camp during the war or who adopted a neutral position stayed in the territory of the borders of the State of Israel.     

Cooperation is What India Makes of It – A Normative Inquiry into the Origins and Development of Regional Cooperation in South Asia and the Indian Ocean

Successful multilateral economic, political or security cooperation as best exemplified by organizations such as the EU or ASEAN invites the question why comparable organizations have never been established in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Rim, two geo-strategically important world regions. This article foregoes political-realist arguments and offers an alternative explanation for the failure of regional multilateralism in those two regions by using the social-constructivist framework of norm localization. This framework, based upon third-generation norm diffusion, provides a new analytical toolbox for analysing the general puzzle why one region may accept a particular norm while rejecting another. Arguing the case for the existence of a special South Asian regional variation of multilateralism which is termed ‘Panchsheel-multilateralism’, the article examines the process of the localization of the global norm regional multilateralism and analyses how this norm became institutionalized in the form of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA). The main argument of the article is that the global norm of regional multilateralism has been localized into a principally Indian influenced model of multilateralism, based on the latter’s cognitive prior. Consequently, there has virtually never been room for any genuine multilateral cooperation, while tangible cooperative results are found in the bilateral domain only.     

Fuel for thought? South Africa's position on the multilateralisation of the nuclear fuel cycle

The proponents of international nuclear fuel banks maintain that these banks will contribute to nuclear non-proliferation, whereas those opposing it maintain that nuclear weapon states support these banks in order to control and multilateralise the nuclear fuel cycle, thus preventing developing states from developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Global inequalities pertaining to nuclear energy continue to persist despite developing states’ efforts to reform the international nuclear energy regime. Moreover, some developing states maintain that these nuclear fuel banks perpetuate inequality in international relations. This is one of the reasons why some leading developing states, such as Brazil and South Africa, oppose these banks. South Africa, for example, intends to re-establish its nuclear fuel cycle and has declared uranium a strategic resource. Against the aforesaid, this article, following a constructivist approach, analyses the emergence and social construction of nuclear fuel banks as a practical expression of nuclear non-proliferation norms. The discussion also considers the inter-subjective understanding of these banks, as well as South Africa’s opposition to them. The article concludes with an analysis of the implications of these opposing views for global equity, equality, nuclear non-proliferation and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.     

The Africanisation of Children's Rights in South Africa: Quo Vadis?

The article seeks to demonstrate how traditional African approaches to justice pervade the Child Justice Act 75 of 2008 (CJA) in ways that provide young offenders the possibility to have their dignity restored, by affording them an opportunity to take responsibility for their wrongful conduct. The article argues that this approach to justice underscores African values of Ubuntu and restorative justice in addressing offending in terms of the CJA. In the final analysis, the author argues that the successful implementation of these approaches will depend partly on how innovative officers in judicial proceedings are in using African models of justice, the values of the Constitution, and the lived experiences of children in conflict with the law.     

South Africa’s peacebuilding in the DRC: Convergence and dissonance with the liberal model

The task of transforming countries affected by conflict towards sustainable peace has been a persistent problem. In response to growing intra-state conflict in the post-Cold War era, it has become the norm to prescribe a cocktail of liberal democracy and free-market economics as a universal formula for building peaceful societies. South Africa, since its post-democratic emergence into global affairs, has also been active in promoting peace in Africa along similar lines. This article embarks on an exploratory qualitative analysis of South Africa’s peacebuilding engagements in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It aims to contribute a better understanding of South Africa’s peacebuilding engagements by utilising the DRC case study to point out areas of convergence and dissonance with the dominant liberal model of peacebuilding. The article finds that, although peppered with successes and failures, South Africa does approach peacebuilding in a unique manner. It also calls for a revision of South Africa’s approach, given the varying levels of success in the DRC.     

Jihad in the Bastion of “Moderation”: Understanding the Threat of ISIS in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Malaysia has long been hailed as a beacon of moderate Islam. Yet, at present, there is considerable support for ISIS amongst Malaysians, and it represents a unique articulation of contemporary violent Islamist extremism. Malaysians who joined ISIS in Syria and its supporters at home are characterized by a sense of Islamic righteousness. Also, they share distinctive features that differentiate them from the old jihadi generation: a diverse occupational background, the lack of either formal or informal religious training, and the growing nexus of criminality-radicalization. Malaysian support for ISIS can be historically and politically contextualized in relation to the Islamization race between the main political parties, the presence of Salafi-jihadi discourse and ISIS’s discursive construction of authentic Islam.