Southern Africa in the world: the context for a strategic review for Southern Africa

Major changes in the global governance architecture have markedly impacted upon and considerably changed the situation in Southern Africa since this journal was established 35 years ago. These shifts have also modified the approach documented in the periodical. With this issue, the Strategic Review enters another stage in its development. In pursuance of being a relevant source of information, profound analysis and engagement with topical policy matters, it is representing academically sound Southern African perspectives, as well as perspectives on Southern Africa. At the same time, it adds voices from civil society and other agencies, contributing in their way to necessary debates. The new blend offers further reflections and dimensions to provoke fruitful discourses not only confined to a purely academic analysis.

• In this issue

As indicated in our common framework presented with this issue, the Strategic Review is far from understanding regional stability as merely a military or intelligence-motivated undertaking in terms of traditional concepts of security. Nor do we consider security as limited to a notion of state security. Rather, we see the need for a human security perspective, which places the people at the centre of concerns. The ambition is to engage in the analysis of socio-political and -economic developments that over and above the level of empirical case studies also impacts on or provides lessons for Southern Africa.

As a multi-disciplinary platform, the journal aims to facilitate vigorous and enlightened debate among scholars, policy makers, practitioners, students and activists. We thereby strive to contribute to the wider discourse strengthening and promoting democracy, human rights, security, good governance and the rule of law. The journal therefore adds to the core of scholarly analyses (which remain the backbone of the periodical) topical reports and assessments, debates, briefings and reviews to reach as wide a readership as possible by means of different but complementing forms of engagement. In this way we seek to promote agency and exchange through thought-provoking, at times provocative, plural and open-minded interaction between various stakeholders. These are at the same time invitations for a discussion, for which we would gladly provide a forum.

A first particular thematic and regional focus in this issue is for obvious current policy reasons devoted to various aspects of the situation in and around Zimbabwe. Arrigo Pallotti engages with "Human Rights and Regional Cooperation: SADC and the crisis in Zimbabwe". He seeks to explain reasons for the passivity towards executing a more visible and effective collective responsibility of the regional configuration to implement the decided mediation towards a compromise among the local political rivals and in protection of constantly violated human rights. By doing so, he points to some of the constraints and limitations of a body, which in the first place is an alliance of governments interested in maintaining their influence and power. This research article is complemented by the update of Michelo Hansungule on "The Suspension of the SADC Tribunal", which to a large extent is the result of the Zimbabwean government's refusal to accept the authority of the Tribunal. In addition, a report by Steve Kibble on "Zimbabwe Between the Referendum and the Elections" summarises his impressions during a recent visit and offers an atmospheric picture from the ground.

The research article by Sadiki Koko on "State-building, Citizenship and the Banyarwanda Question in the DRC" draws attention to the power of citizenship as a defining element for integration or exclusion of people as (non-)members of a society. Governments in the region are tempted to tamper with citizenship definitions and rights for reasons of maintaining and reproducing power bases and the elimination of potential rivals as political candidates. That this is by no means an instrument confined to Southern Africa is documented by the recent efforts to discredit the US President for allegedly being not a born US-American citizen and therefore not qualified to campaign for and being elected into the highest political office. Notions of citizenship remain a contested affair also with regard to whole groups of people in the process of nation building, as the article shows.

The research article by Moritz Schuberth revisits "The Politics of Knowledge Production in Post-genocide Rwanda" as an example of lessons from practices of transitional justice and forms of dealing with trauma. Reconstruction and reconciliation are ingredients to nation building in many Southern African societies and are handled in different ways — if handled at all. South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission contrasts, for example, with the deliberate absence of any such efforts in Namibia as a way of defining and handling national reconciliation. The case of Rwanda offers insights which can be instructive for meeting the challenges in other societies in the region. This focus on coming to terms with a post-genocide era touches also in some way on security issues and the desire of governments to maintain and execute control over the societies they represent at the politically elected level - not least by means of an official discourse.

But it is not only discourse and official narrative, as forms of social engineering, which are applied as instruments to govern. The much more direct temptation to opt for increased measures of securitisation as control mechanisms by governments is reviewed critically by Dale McKinley in his intervention on "State Security and Civil-political Rights in South Africa", thereby presenting a social movement activist's perspective. We do hope that his engaged critique will initiate some further debate on related matters.

Finally, Anthoni van Nieuwkerk complements the security perspective within a regional context through his examination of "SIPO II: Too little too late?", which returns to an analysis of conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms through the Strategic Indicative Plan for the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Co-operation as an institutional arrangement within SADC. It reflects on achievements and limitations of regional integration as an important reference for multilateral relations in Southern Africa.