Arms over AIDS in South Africa: Why the boys had to have their toys

Alternatives

Volumn 30, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 275-295

  Van Der Westhuizen, Janis ^a  

^a STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY   (South Africa)

Author keywords

AIDS; Gender and warfare; South African foreign policy; Symbolic power; Weapons as status symbols

Indexed keywords

EID: 27744453806     PISSN: 03043754     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030437540503000302     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. D. P. Eyre and M. C. Suchman, "Status, Norms, and the Proliferation of Conventional Weapons: An Institutional Theory Approach," in Peter Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
2. Wall Street Journal Europe, November 20, 2003.
3. A. Butler, "South Africa's Political Futures," Government and Opposition 38 (2003): 93-112.
4. This is not a uniquely South African complication: Uganda's defense minister allegedly suggested in the mid-1990s that one of the most likely triggers for a coup was the perception among the military that the government was not tackling the HIV/AIDS crisis with sufficient resolve: Stefan Elbe, "Strategic Implications of HIV/AIDS," Adelphi Papers 357, no. 1 (2003): 50.
5. L. Heineken, "Living in Terror: The Looming Security Threat to Southern Africa," African Security Review [Institute for Security Studies] 10, no. 4 (2001): 2: www.iss.co.za/pubs/ASR?10no4/Heinecken.
6. A. Price-Smith, "The HIV/AIDS Pandemic as a Threat to Governance and National Security: The Case of South Africa," paper at the International Studies Association annual conference, Portland, Ore., February 28, 2003.
7. T. Crawford-Browne, "The Arms Deal Scandal," Review of African Political Economy 31, no. 100 (2003): 331.
8. D. R. Black, "Democracy, Development, Security, and South Africa's Arms Deal," in Philip Nel and Janis van der Westhuizen, eds., Democratizing Foreign Policy? Lessons from South Africa (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2003), pp. 137-156.
9. During the course of the arms-deal saga, Zuma was investigated by the Scorpions, an elite police taskforce, on allegations that he solicited a bribe of R500,000 per annum to terminate investigations into a deal that involved a French-government-controlled company, Thomson CSF. The Scorpions announced that although there was prima facie evidence of corruption, it would not prosecute Zuma.
10. G. Harris, "The Irrationality of South Africa's Military Expenditure," African Security Review [Institute for Security Studies] 11, no. 2 (2002): 1:-www.iss.co.za/pubs/ASR/11no2/Harris.
11. Agreeing with the statement were 62 percent of ANC voters; 66 percent of blacks; 77 percent of Coloureds; 65 percent of Indians, 61 percent of white Afrikaners, and 63 percent of English whites. See L. Schlemmer, "Can South Africa's Democracy Survive Its History and Political Culture?" Issue Focus Series, April, 2002, p. 27.
12. Department of Defence, Defence in a Democracy, White Paper on National Defence for the Republic of South Africa, May 1996, p. 3; available at www.mil.za/articles&papers/Frame/Frame.
13. Department of Defence, South African Defence Review, 1998; available at www.mil.za/articles&papers/Frame/Frame, p. 1. These principles were reiterated during parliamentary briefings by SANDF to the Defence Portfolio Committee on August 17, 2004.
14. Black, note 8, p. 3.
15. Harris, note 10, p. 3 (italics added).
16. G. Shelton, "The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) and President Mbeki's Peace and Security Agenda: New Roles and Mission," Institute for Global Dialogue occasional paper 42 (Midrand: Institute for Global Dialogue, 2004), p. 29.
17. "No Plane, No Gain?" Mail and Guardian (Johannesburg), December 10-16, 2004.
18. To complicate matters, infection rates also vary a great deal in geographic terms. For example, a military police unit in northern Kwazulu-Natal allegedly exhibited a 90 percent infection rate, while some military units around Pietermaritzburg and on the border with Mozambique are reported to have recorded rates in excess of 70 percent: Price-Smith, note 6, p. 27.
19. Elbe, note 4, p. 42.
20. Heineken, note 5, pp. 3-5.
21. Elbe, note 4, p. 40.
22. According to a 2003 issue of a Johannesburg newspaper, "The defence force cannot train, it cannot regenerate, it cannot replace more mundane equipment, such as uniforms and troop carriers. There is no money to retrench surplus troops, no money to replace key personnel, no money to fund operations. . . . On top of this we now have a commitment to deploy an additional 1,300 troops in peacekeeping operations in the Congo. For each one deployed you need two on rotation. This is going to stretch our capacity in terms of numbers of combat-ready soldiers we can muster, given that so many are old, not fit or trained": Sam Sole, "Arms Deal Cripples SANDF," Mail and Guardian, March 20-27, 2003.
23. Shelton, note 16, p. 24.
24. Heineken, note 5, pp. 4-6. Heineken notes that, on average, it takes an army officer from five to seven years before he or she can be promoted to captain, eight to eleven years (age 25-30) to reach major, twelve to fifteen years (age 30-35) reach lieutenant-colonel, and sixteen to nineteen years (age 35-40 and older) to make colonel.
25. P. Batchelor and P. Dunne, "Industrial Participation, Investment, and Growth: The Case of South Africa's Defence-related Industry," Development Southern Africa 17, no. 3 (2000): 430.
26. Black, note 8, p. 10.
27. Harris, note 10, p. 4.
28. Batchelor and Dunne, note 25, p. 432.
29. Crawford-Browne, note 7, p. 337.
30. Shelton, note 16, p. 26.
31. For example, Algeria accounted for more than 70 percent of South Africa's overseas arms deals in 1998; see Richard A. Bitzinger, Towards a Brave New Arms Industry? (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, Adelphi Paper #35, July 2003), pp. 43, 45-46.
32. Crawford-Browne, note 7, p. 334.
33. J. G. March and J. P. Olsen, "The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders," International Organization 52, no. 4 (1998): 943-969.
34. As March and Olsen put it, "scholars committed to a consequentialist position tend to see an international system of interaction, autonomous, egoistic, self-interested maximizers. Preferences are usually taken as given, and expectations of consequences are taken as determined by the state of the external world and the biases (if any) of the individual. Scholars committed to an identity position, on the other hand, see political actors as acting in accordance with rules and practices that are socially constructed, publicly known, anticipated and accepted. They portray an international society as a community of rule followers and role players with distinctive sociocultural ties, cultural connections, intersubjective understandings and senses of belonging. Identities and rules are constitutive as well and regulative and are molded by social interaction and experience": March and Olsen, International Organization ibid., p. 952.
35. Eyre and Suchman, note 1.
36. Ibid., p. 82.
37. Barry O'Neill, "Nuclear Weapons and National Prestige," p. 4, Department of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles; unpublished paper available at www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/boneill/prescientprestintorg2.pdf.
38. The fate of Sweden's famous Wasa ship remains one of the most ironic and visible demonstrations of these processes. Due in part to a design flaw, King Wasa's impressive flagship, highly decorated, heavily armed, and touted as being the very embodiment of the Swedish crown, sank within minutes of starting its maiden voyage. It had too narrow a base to sustain the superstructure.
39. O'Neill, note 37, p. 36.
40. "Zuma Opens SA Fighter Plane Production Line," Mail & Guardian, October 13, 2003.
41. South African Council of Churches, Defence Seminar Report, November 26, 1999; available at www.sacc-ct.org.za/ni991126.
42. Crawford-Browne, note 7, p. 333.
43. Black, note 8, p. 14.
44. Joshua Goldstein, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 5.
45. Eyre and Suchman, note 1.
46. According to Carol Gilligan, these two ethics, though not invariably dichotomous, are two different modes of moral reasoning. The ethic of care "is contextual and particular in that it emphasises the responsibilities that stem from specific relationships in concrete circumstances and it addresses specific needs through a process of empathy and the 'activity of care.' By contrast, the dominant 'masculine' ethic of justice takes as its reference point the universal, abstract dictates of fairness and impartiality, the formal rules that derive from them and the rights they entail": cited in R. Lister, Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives (New York: New York University Press, 1997).
47. For a detailed analysis, see Peter Liberman, "The Rise and Fall of the South African Bomb," International Security 26, no. 2 (2001): 45-86.
48. Notably France, the People's Republic of China, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These states' possession had been legitimized on the basis of them having manufactured and exploded these devices before January 1, 1967.
49. O'Neill, note 37, p. 26.
50. P. Nel, I. Taylor, and J. Van der Westhuizen, "Multilateralism in South Africa's Foreign Policy: The Search for a Critical Rationale," Global Governance 6, no. 1 (2000): 14.
51. J. Van der Westhuizen, "South Africa's Emergence as a Middle Power," Third World Quarterly 19, no. 3 (1998): 448.
52. Eyre and Suchman, note 1.