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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (52)
While killing is delegitimised by law, gangs who kill their rivals are legitimated within their social group. The central analytical argument is that the killing of gang rivals is a form of “capital” (Bourdieu 1986) that forges and produces enduring social networking relationships among gang groups. Killing is a celebrated practice within certain g...
While in post-apartheid South Africa, the majority of young people were caught up in the euphoria of attaining political independence in 1994, the country remains an unequal society, with most black people languishing in and confronted by the triple socioeconomic and political challenges of unemployment, poverty and social inequality. In a context...
The story of South Africa’s liberation struggle, from apartheid to constitutional democracy, is writ large with in-depth contributions from young people. Despite their historical involvement, young people have been noticeably absent from the transitional processes ushering in South Africa’s postapartheid dispensation. Their absence has created a cr...
While the dominant understanding on the relationship between African migrants and local South Africans is framed around xenophobia, migrants are not always victims, rather they engage in socio-economic relations with the local people. We assert that African migrants do have agency to act and think beyond xenophobia. In this chapter, we examine how...
In this article, we argue that the “making” and deployment of political violence can be construed as hard work, in which political elites mobilize those from below to sustain their positions through the mobilization and doing of violence against perceived opposition political parties and or individuals. The article examines the ways in which former...
In a national context embroiled in political-economic crisis, Zimbabwean youth have configured social spaces on social media platforms to resist political oppression. This chapter focuses on the ways in which youth respond to political oppression in Zimbabwe through the creative utilization of cyberspace and popular entertainment, more particularly...
Introduction
In a national context embroiled in political-economic crisis, Zimbabwean youth have configured social spaces on social media platforms to resist political oppression. This chapter focuses on the ways in which youth respond to political oppression in Zimbabwe through the creative utilization of cyberspace and popular entertainment, more...
In post-apartheid South Africa, one of the central analytical questions is to do with the continuity of protests, in particular student movement protests that are highly driven by social, economic and political conditions in the present. In a social and political context of student protests, student movement is considered a threat to the state and...
This article argues that, through the coup, the military has become more visible in national politics in post-Mugabe Zimbabwe. The current situation under President Mnangagwa marks a qualitative difference with the military under Mugabe’s rule. Currently, in now being more prominent, the military is politics and is the determinant of any political...
The “making” of gang relationships has remained at the periphery of research, yet it is critical in understanding the continuity and sustainability of gangsterism in different contexts. This paper examines the ways in which young men involved in gang violence forge and sustain their relationships in the streets of a black township in South Africa....
This chapter explores some of the hidden voices of those ex-combatants in South Africa who are marginalised and ostracised from the hegemony of former African National Congress (ANC) veterans who dominate the discussion of ex-combatant issues in post-1994 South Africa. These are the voices of women combatants in the ANC who are marginalised because...
The gun is not just an object and or a weapon; it has particular, deep relations with those who carry and possess it. The gun is embedded in the mentality of the man who uses it. Once gun life is inculcated in the mind, it is difficult to leave it behind. In post-apartheid South Africa, gangs and the use of guns have continued unabated. Despite thi...
In post-apartheid South Africa, on military integration, the new South African National Defence Forces (SANDF) faced numerous social and political challenges on integration, including former guerrillas absenting themselves from work without official leave. The paper examines the ways in which the Azania Peoples Liberation Army (APLA), an armed wing...
The decolonisation of sociology continues to be characterised by debates on what it constitutes, in both theory and practice. While such debates are centred on a ‘radical decolonisation’, we argue that the decolonisation of sociological curricula is never final, but should be driven by and with ‘hybridised’ thinking on the knowledge which underpins...
Zimbabwean soldiers deployed to the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, 1998–2002) feared death and misfortune, and patrolled the landscape of this war zone largely in terms of terrain they needed to dominate. Yet these soldiers’ guns and military tactics were understood to be challenged by spirits which eventually dictated the ways in wh...
This paper examines the institutional management of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) in Botswana. We analyse the often contested roles of the state and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as recipients of GFATM and partners in extending public health service provision to communities. Of importance is that Botswana’s...
Maringira and Núñez Carrasco examine the manner in which army deserters from Zimbabwe communicate and continue to re-live and enact their past military lives in exile in South Africa. The adoption of different modes of communication is related as it occurs in contrasting places—the intimate space of camaraderie; and the public space of the Church—w...
This article examines the ways in which communities in black townships deal with gang violence in post-apartheid Cape Town, South Africa, against the background of inadequate or absent state responses. It draws on ethnographic research conducted in townships in the Cape Metropole between 2016 and 2018. It explains how communities in black townships...
Much of what we know about Zimbabwe’s liberation war heroes and heroines is associated with the Zimbabwe African National Union- Patriotic Front (ZANU PF)’s recognition of individuals who defended its hold on power. However, of late, an upsurge in factionalism in the party has resulted in increasing reference to heroism as a means to exert factiona...
In post-colonial Africa ‘ex-combatant’, ‘war veteran’, ‘ex-fighter’, and ‘demobilised soldier’ are categories that denote a history of war, violence and conflict. In essence, these are labels which represent military identities. However, despite the view that the Demobilisation, Disarmament and Reintegration (DDR) programme has failed to re-integra...
Focusing on life in the married quarters of the military barracks of the Zimbabwe National Army, this article explores how routine soldiering practices impact domestic relations between soldiers and their civilian family members who live with them on military bases, as well as how the tensions of soldiers’ domestic lives spill over into their milit...
This article examines the ways in which Zimbabwean foot soldiers engaged in military corrupt activities, stealing army rations from the trenches to resell in neighbouring civilian communities and Congolese soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The practice became widespread among and between senior and junior officers. However, this p...
In postcolonial Africa, the military has become an actor in politics, often in ways that can be described as unprofessional. This paper focuses on the manner in which the Zimbabwean National Army (ZNA) has become heavily politicized since independence, directly supporting the regime of President Robert Mugabe while denigrating the opposition politi...
This paper examines the ways in which the military infringes on the social and political rights of soldiers who joined the Zimbabwe National Army in post-independence Zimbabwe. Contrary to the scholarly and policy debates that present Zimbabwean soldiers as the silent prop behind President Robert Mugabe and the perpetrators of political violence, t...
Much of what we know about gendered military identity has focused on the ways in which soldiers are trained and deployed in war contexts, while neglecting soldiers who desert the military. This chapter explores the extent to which male military identity persists, even among those who desert the military and find themselves in exile. Through militar...
The deployment of soldiers’ in diamond mining areas in Zimbabwe is beginning to receive much scholarly attention, partly because scholars researching on such issues are mainly driven by the meta-narratives of ‘artisanal miners’, popularly known as “magweja” in the Zimbabwean context. In many cases soldiers are presented as perpetrators of violence...
While studies on soldiers who leave the army have focused on them as perpetrators of political violence in war and peace, little is known about the ways in which soldiers have been subjected to violence. This paper examines the ways in which Zimbabwe National Army deserters who are currently in exile in South Africa experienced politically inspired...
While the human rights impact of the deployment of state security agencies in the Chiadzwa diamond fields has been explored, it is important to continue to expose the increasing tendency within the sector to take public resources that should be protected by the state and used for the benefit of the people and channel them for personal gain. The sec...
While the dominant discourse in Zimbabwe on and about soldiers is that they are perpetrators of political violence, this does not always reflect the lived experiences of soldiers who joined the army in post-independence Zimbabwe. Based on army deserters? narratives emerging from 44 life history interviews and two focus groups, this article argues t...
The paper reveals how Zimbabwean soldiers who fought in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (1998–2002) were challenged by the terrain of war. While soldiers are trained to live and fight in dreadful wars, I argue that immersing oneself in the war terrain is neither mathematical nor calculative; rather, war tactics to be employed are defined by th...
The military presents a typical example of an "enclosed system " that is able to achieve the impractical; it is where soldiers are "made" from civilians. Through processes of military training recruits are depersonalized and stripped of their civilian ways by the order and command of military instructors. While the processes and practices ofmilitar...
In post-colonial Africa, the military has been central to sustaining freedom. However, the current political trends in Zimbabwe represent a different phenomenon, with the army perpetrating violence against its own citizens. For many years, the concept of ‘militarisation’ has been used to define social and political practices outside the military. S...
The narratives of Zimbabwean soldiers who fought in the Democratic Republic of Congo war (1998–2002) have received scant attention, particularly at a time when the professionalisation of the Zimbabwean National Army (ZNA) is questioned by scholars and, largely, by the private media, in and outside Zimbabwe. This article explores accounts of soldier...
This chapter explores how former Zimbabwean soldiers who deserted or resigned from the Zimbabwe National Army journey between two seemingly contradictory spaces in search of healing: the space of camaraderie in the political association of the former soldiers in exile namely Affected Military Men of Zimbabwe Association (AMMOZA) and Pentecostal chu...
Through military training, soldiers' bodies are shaped and prepared for war and military related duties. In the context these former Zimbabwean soldiers find themselves - that of desertion and 'underground life' in exile in South Africa - their military trained bodies and military skills are their only resource. In this article, we explore the ways...
This article focuses on how ex-combatants in South Africa remain militarised. Identities which were forged through resistance continue to be reproduced in different ways in post-conflict society. Military identity is a source of status and recognition in the everyday lives of ex-combatants, either as ‘defenders of the community’ or for individual g...
This article examines the habitus of soldiers who either deserted or resigned from the Zimbabwe National Army in the post–2000 crisis in Zimbabwe and now live in exile in Johannesburg, South Africa. It is based on the information provided by forty-four former soldiers who related their life histories and participated in informal conversations and g...
Projects
Project (1)
What we know of African soldiers is largely premised on guerrilla fighters for the war of independence, however, this study focuses on soldiers who joined African militarists in post-colonial Africa. I am much more interested in the ways in which soldiers without a liberation ideology, perform their military duties, and their own understanding of military professionalism in the context in which African militarized are often embroiled in politics.
