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e e Southen Africa Souìh Anca Cafn <4 , B~O~ A e. <4 ox <4 4~4<~ Voi. 10 No. 5/ July 1995 Il K <. <4 K~I &yo I) BhtW iii Southern South lAfrica' Abroad I/e I<~ -<ß- M o ~eA i. \ At4 e A, I ~, e 4~-~ G,4.. -~-' i , Ae 467S July 1995 REPORT Vol. 10 No. 5 pi Southern Africa REPORT is produced 4 times a year by a volunteer collective of TCLSAC, the Toronto Committee for Links between Southern Africa & Canada 603-1/2 Parliament St. Toronto, M4X 1P9 Tel. (416) 967-5562 Email telsac(web.apc.org Submissions, suggestions and help in production are welcome and invited. ISSN 0820-5582 SAR is a member of the Canadian Magazine Publishers Association. All rights reversed. Subscriptions Annual TCLSAC membership and Southern Africa Report subscription rates are as follows: SUBSCRIPTION: Individual (1 year) . ... $18:00 Institution .......... ...$40.00 MEMBERSHIP: (includes subscription) Regular .. ......... ..$35.00 Unemployed Student .. ......... ..$18.00 Senior Sustainer ..... ...over $100.00 Overseas add $10.00 Contents Editorial: Ten Years Young ......... ... 1 Regional Security: The 'New Security' in Southern Africa ........... Prisoner of the Past? The New South Africa Abroad ... ............ The Sad Saga of KwaZulu-Natal .... ............. Donor Dollars and Mozambique's NGOs ............ Gender Field Workers: A Toronto Visit ....... .................. Undermining the RDP: A Reply to Barry Pinsky .... ............... Review: Sporting Colours ..... ................... SAR Collective Margie Adam, Christine Beckermann, Lois Browne, Marlea Clarke, David Cooke, David Galbraith, Dave Hartman, David Pottie, John S. Saul, Lauren Swenarchuk, Joe Vise Cover design by Art Work Cover photo by David Hartman Canadian Publications Mail Product Sales Agreement No. 569607 __________________________________________ i ~- .0!W15l man Southern Africa REPORT july 199.5 Vol. Ten Years Young Well, we did it. Now we'll just have to do it again. We're talking about ten years of Souilhern Africa Report Not that we've won any National Magazine Awards here in Canada. We've never been cited in the Toronto Globe and Mail's prestigious "Magazines" overview. Nor have we ever had our existence noted by such Globe pundits as Robert Fulford or Rick Salutin. However, we do seem to have a loyal, to judge by renewal rates, and even growing (albeit by tens and twenties rather than hundreds and thousands) readership, both in Canada and abroad. Word of mouth, and the occasional letter, also tells us that both the aesthetic and political quality of what we've been doing remains at an acceptable level. According to our readers, we've managed to weather the transition from the heady days of liberation movements and anti'apartheid struggle in southern Africa to the present moment of greyer and more sobering realities in a reasonably coivincing and interesting manner. Certainly the enterprise continues to convince and interest us. The eaitorial collective still sports some of the same wizened veterans who helped launch our endeavours a decade ago, for example. And just enough young blood has since joined the magazine team to suggest that southern Africa sup1 No. 1 June 1985 port work is not merely an agenda for geriatrics. True, we've come close to los- Southern Africa REPORT july 1995 .r 1-51 0________0_ ing our zest for the enterprise from time to time. This spring we went through some soul-searchirg when we questioned, quite fundamentally and in concert with others beyond the working group itself, the present state of our finances, of our energy level, and, not least, of our sense of political purpose. Political purpose? No problem, once we stopped to think about it. Who can doubt, as we've had occasion to emphasize in previous editorials in these pages, that southern Africa remains an instructive microcosm of much of what ails the world, even if globally inflicted structural adjustment packages and locally-generated despots have now replaced desiccated colonialisms and apartheid autocrats as the main indices of regional blight? Nor should we doubt that southern Africans in the present issue Marlea Clarke tells us of two women who well qualify as shining examples - will continue to give us all lessons in what it means to fight back. And, as our shared vulnerability, North and South, to the vagaries of footloose global capital becomes ever more apparent, there is also a lot to be learned from the new kinds of ties that are being forged between Canadians and southern Africans in the post- apartheid period. Political purpose aplenty, then. As for finances, that's another question. In this regard, we hope that any of you reading this issue will subscribe, if you don't do so already, and will also get any institution you have access to (your library, for example) to subscribe as well. As hinted above, even the odd five or ten new subscriptions is enough to revive our energies when they start to flag. We'd also be further energized if readers were to take rather more active ownership of the magazine. Certainly, we'd welcome any advice you might have about the substance of what we're doing: subjects to be covered, authors to be solicited, lines of analysis to be explored. And how about a few more "public" letters the more argumentative the better to enliven our pages and help push us all a step forward in our thinking. Help us, in short, to give you ten more years of something otherwise not easy to come by: pertinent and politically pretty correct writing on something - we suspect you'll agree- even more important than the O.J. Simpson trial! We hope, too, that you'll forgive such slightly self-indulgent midsummer musings on the occasion of our tenth anni-versary. Your reward, in the rest of the magazine, is some of the same kind of strong stuff on southern Africa that you've become accustomed to. Front and centre are pieces by Roger Southall and Peter Vale on some key aspects of South Africa's foreign policy-making, part of our on- going effort to determine what's really new about the "new South Africa." Not enough, Vale at least seems to suggest, and this is an c pinion shared by Patrick Bond in these pages as he critiques an earlier article by our own Barry Pinsky on the ANC's housing strategy. Look, too, for some illumination from Gerry Mar6 of the sinister doings that continue to unfold in KwaZuluNatal. And, from Alexander Costy, a nice spin on the question of Mozambican NGOs and the state of "civil society" in that country. A good review, too, from long-time contributor, Bruce Kidd, reflecting back on the anti-apartheid struggle on the sporting front. And wait 'til you see what we've got lined up for you in volume 11, number one. Yes, we really are going to do our first decade all over again. july 199.5 Southern Africa REPORT july 1995 Southern Africa REPORT Regional Security The 'New Security' in Southern Africa BY ROGER SOUTHALL Roger Southall is Professor of Politics at Rhodes University. An era of regeneration and interstate cooperation throughout the Southern African region seems possible with the fall cf apartheid, the democratization prbcess that has taken place throughout the region, and the winding down of the externally fuelled civil conflicts in Angola and Mozambique. Hopes for such a period of renewal have been symbolized and institutionalized by the transformation of the old Southern African Development Coordinating Conference (SADCC) into the new Southern African Development Community (SADC), launched in 1994 with the new, post-apartheid South Africa at its heart. The background to this is wellknown: how apartheid South Africa tried to dominate the region by drawing its most immediately dependent neighbours into a Constellation of Southern African States (CONSAS); how these same countries responded by forming SADCC in 1980 in the hopes of reducing their dependence on South Africa through mutual cooperation; and how South Africa replied with its policy of "total strategy" and a vicious military destabilization of those countries in the region that supported the ANC struggle. The end of the Cold War was the precursor to the wider transition to democracy that has taken place throughout the region. Competitive elections since 1989 in Namibia (twice), Zambia, Lesotho, Malawi and Mozambique have contributed to enormously improved prospects for inter-state collaboration. Central to the new optimism that now defines the region has been the conviction that relations between South Africa and its neighbours will now be based on mutual trust in a shared project of regional peace and development. The arrival of the new government in Pretoria headed by President Nelson Mandela has been viewed as synonymous not only with legitimate government but also with the birth of a new moral order. This perspective has drawn conviction from a series of ANC policy statements made both before and after the election. The most programmatic of these was the ANC's commitment, elaborated in October 1993, to a foreign policy future that would make central a preoccupation with human rights, the promotion of democracy worldwide, respect for international law, a striving for international peace, and commitment to the best interests of Africa generally and of the Southern African region in particular. Influential, too, was the view expressed by Kadar Asmal that post-apartheid South Africa would owe its regional neighbours compensation (via the forging of special relationships if not financial restitution) for the devastation it had wreaked upon them in the past. And more recently, the region took heart from the formal apology offered to Mozambique by new Speaker of the National Assembly, Frene Ginwala, upon the occasion of President Chissano's visit to the South African Parliament.