ISS BOOK LAUNCH
EVOLUTIONS AND REVOLUTIONS - A CONTEMPORARY HISTORY OF MILITARIES IN SOUTHERN AFRICA

 

The launch will be held at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria.

 

 

Date: Thursday, 10 November 2005

Time: 11h00 – 12h30

Place: The Conference Room, Institute for Security Studies, Pretoria

 

RSVP: Ms. Catherine Maidi

Email:[email protected]

Tel: (012) 346-9500, fax: (012) 346-4569

 

The programme for the launch will be:

 

• Welcome and introductory remarks by Major General Len le Roux;

• Short briefing of the work done by the Defence Sector Programme of the ISS by the head of the programme, Len Le Roux

• Brief remarks by Chapter writers;

• Introduction to the book by Dr Martin Rupiya, Senior Researcher at the Defence Sector Programme of the ISS.

• Book Launch

• Light lunch.

You or your designated representative, are kindly invited to attend this book launch.

 

REVIEW

 

Evolutions & Revolutions: A Contemporary History of Militaries in Southern Africa, Edited by Martin Rupiya,

Pretoria, Institute for Security Studies, 2005.

 

 

In his introduction to this splendid collection of essays on modern southern African military history, Martin Rupiya reminds us that no thorough comparative history of African armies has been published since Hubert Moyse-Bartlett’s The Kings’ African Rifles 1890–1945, published half a century ago, and describing a world which, militarily as in every other way, is now hard to recognise. There have been books about African militaries since then, of course, but they have generally been by European or North American scholars, and have tended to focus on comparatively narrow issues such as the involvement of African militaries in politics. It is therefore a particular pleasure to welcome a collection of essays which treats the modern military history of southern Africa as a subject worthy of study in its own right.

 

It is also extremely welcome that this is a book written by Africans. For well-known political and economic reasons, everyone with an interest in Africa is well aware that, overwhelmingly, books on African history, as well as current affairs in Africa, tend to be written by non-Africans and published outside Africa. Not only Africans find this odd, and it is hard to see how a continent can really be in charge of its own destiny when someone else is in charge of its history. Who controls the past, as George Orwell’s Party in 1984 was fond of saying, controls the future.

 

In addition, it is useful that many of the essays in this book are by practitioners, who were often participants in some of the issues they describe. Thus, Maj Gen (Rtd) Len le Roux was a leading participant in the South African defence transformation before and after 1994, Brig Gen Paulino Macaringue had a distinguished military career before becoming a senior official in the Mozambican Ministry of Defence, and Lt Gen Louis Matshwenyego Fisher is the commander of the Botswana Defence Force. Military authors do, of course, also bring a touch of informed realism to writing about the military that the rest of us struggle to achieve.

 

 

The book has chapters on all of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries, including an informative essay by Martin Rupiya (who has also taken on the burden of writing several of the chapters) on the Mauritius Police Force. Some of the examples, like that of South Africa or Zimbabwe, have at least been studied before. By contrast, little has been written on the military history of Angola, and the chapter on Malawi may indeed, as the book suggests, be the first sustained piece of writing on the subject ever. Completeness, indeed, is one of the book’s great virtues, and it provides a mass of factual information, statistics and organization charts which would be difficult and tedious to find elsewhere, and which are themselves an indication of greater openness on security issues in a part of the world not previously famous renowned for it. There are also thorough notes and an extensive bibliography. It should therefore be a standard work of reference for those interested in modern African armies.

 

In general, however, the essays are not exclusively technical, and contain some useful and informed discussion about the interaction between the military and the state which has been a feature of Africa since independence. As the title of the book reminds us, modern African armies come from many different military traditions, and it is always risky to try to draw too many general conclusions about them. Armies linked to one-party states are well covered in the book, and there is an interesting account, for example, by Nestor Luanda, of the relationship between the Tanzanian Peoples’ Defence Force and the ruling Tanganyika African Nationalist Union after 1964, and what it led to. The very real problems of African militaries – and African political systems – are not ignored either, with several authors tackling the issue of AIDS in the military directly.

 

Niggles are relatively few. Probably for reasons of space, little is said about the fascinating issue of the continuity of military traditions between the pre-colonial and post-colonial eras. The Conclusion, by Martin Rupiya again, sketches out some interesting judgments, which indicate how much more useful comparative work remains to be done. And I would have welcomed a greater stress on operational issues in some cases – little is said, for example, about the Tanzanian military’s performance in the fighting against Uganda. Finally, something on the performance of African military forces under UN and AU auspices in peacekeeping operations would have been useful.

 

All in all, a useful and ground-breaking book on a subject which has had nowhere near the attention it deserves, and which is especially valuable because it is written by experts from the region.

 

 

David Chuter