This work is a study of civil-military relations in the Republic of South Africa while Pieter Willem Botha was prime minister (1978-89). The author's controversial thesis is that Prime Minister Botha, recognizing that his country had reached the historical juncture when it needed to establish a new political order encompassing all of its diverse peoples, moved effectively to prepare the ground for fundamental constitutional change. What was needed above all were stabilization measures to assure the support of the white population for reform. Botha used the South African defence force as his primary instrument. By 1989, Professor Roherty maintains, a striking degree of stabilization had been achieved within the country and throughout South Africa, and the groundwork for epochal change had been prepared. The author makes use of exclusive interviews with South Africans from the political, military, intelligence, corporate, and academic worlds.

Do existing measures of state fragility measure fragility accurately? Based on commonly used fragility measures, South Africa (SA) is classified as a relatively stable state, yet rising violent crime, high unemployment, endemic poverty, eroding public trust, identity group based preferential treatment policies, and the rapid rise of the private security sector are all indications that SA may be suffering from latent state fragility. Based on a comprehensive view of security, this study examines the extent to which measures of political legitimacy and good governance, effectiveness in the security system – especially with respect to the police system – and mounting economic challenges may be undermining the stability of SA in ways undetected by commonly used measures of state fragility. Using a mixed-methods approach based on quantitative secondary data analysis and semi-structured interviews with government officials, security practitioners, and leading experts in the field, this study finds that the combination of colonization, apartheid, liberation struggle, transition from autocracy to democracy, high levels of direct and structural violence, stagnating social, political, and economic developments make South Africa a latently fragile state. Conceptually, the results of this research call into question the validity of commonly used measures of state fragility and suggest the need for a more comprehensive approach to assessing state fragility. Practically, this study offers a number of concrete policy recommendations for how South Africa may address mounting levels of latent state fragility.

Exploring how the region is changing today - as transnational solidarity and a single regional economy remove the distinctions between national and international politics - he asks whether South African domination can finally be overcome and considers what sort of cosmopolitan political arrangement will be appropriate for southern Africa in the new century."--BOOK JACKET.

South Africa boasts the largest private security sector in the entire world, reflecting deep anxieties about violence, security, and governance. Twilight Policing is an ethnographic study of the daily policing practices of armed response officersÑa specific type of private security officerÑand their interactions with citizens and the state police in Durban, South Africa. This book shows how their policing practices simultaneously undermine and support the state, resulting in actions that are neither public nor private, but something in between, something Òtwilight.Ó Their performances of security are also punitive, disciplinary, and exclusionary, and they work to reinforce post-apartheid racial and economic inequalities. Ultimately, Twilight Policing helps to illuminate how citizens survive volatile conditions and to whom they assign the authority to guide them in the process.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of continued engagement with post-apartheid South Africa to United States national security. It is based on the realist premise that the U.S. has limited national interests in Sub-Saharan Africa which would be best served by a regional security strategy explicitly predicated on engagement with South Africa. The paper is presented in six chapters. Chapter One places South Africa in regional perspective as Sub-Saharan Africa's pivotal state through an analysis of its political, economic, and military dimensions of national power. Chapter Two describes U.S. national interests in Sub-Saharan Africa. These interests -- South Africa's transition to democracy, continued U.S. access to strategic minerals, the security of U.S. economic interests, and the security of sea lines of communication -- focus on South Africa and the Southern African sub-region. Chapter Three provides an analysis of the Sub-Saharan African strategic environment. South Africa offers the United States the greatest opportunity for meaningful engagement in a strategic environment which is generally characterized by dysfunctional political and economic regimes and their attendant social conditions. Chapter Four describes the emergence of a U.S. policy for Sub-Saharan Africa which implicitly recognizes South Africa as the region's pivotal state. Chapter Five is a critical analysis of U.S. regional strategy for Sub- Saharan Africa. This chapter demonstrates that there are significant discontinuities in U.S. policy and strategy for Sub-Saharan Africa. In effect, the U.S. lacks a comprehensive strategy for Sub- Saharan Africa; there are only a group of loosely coordinated political, economic, security, and informational policy initiatives which provide the semblance, but not the substance of a regional strategy.