3 results
Looking Backward, Looking Forward: MLA Members Speak
- April Alliston, Elizabeth Ammons, Jean Arnold, Nina Baym, Sandra L. Beckett, Peter G. Beidler, Roger A. Berger, Sandra Bermann, J.J. Wilson, Troy Boone, Alison Booth, Wayne C. Booth, James Phelan, Marie Borroff, Ihab Hassan, Ulrich Weisstein, Zack Bowen, Jill Campbell, Dan Campion, Jay Caplan, Maurice Charney, Beverly Lyon Clark, Robert A. Colby, Thomas C. Coleman III, Nicole Cooley, Richard Dellamora, Morris Dickstein, Terrell Dixon, Emory Elliott, Caryl Emerson, Ann W. Engar, Lars Engle, Kai Hammermeister, N. N. Feltes, Mary Anne Ferguson, Annie Finch, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Jerry Aline Flieger, Norman Friedman, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Sandra M. Gilbert, Laurie Grobman, George Guida, Liselotte Gumpel, R. K. Gupta, Florence Howe, Cathy L. Jrade, Richard A. Kaye, Calhoun Winton, Murray Krieger, Robert Langbaum, Richard A. Lanham, Marilee Lindemann, Paul Michael Lützeler, Thomas J. Lynn, Juliet Flower MacCannell, Michelle A. Massé, Irving Massey, Georges May, Christian W. Hallstein, Gita May, Lucy McDiarmid, Ellen Messer-Davidow, Koritha Mitchell, Robin Smiles, Kenyatta Albeny, George Monteiro, Joel Myerson, Alan Nadel, Ashton Nichols, Jeffrey Nishimura, Neal Oxenhandler, David Palumbo-Liu, Vincent P. Pecora, David Porter, Nancy Potter, Ronald C. Rosbottom, Elias L. Rivers, Gerhard F. Strasser, J. L. Styan, Marianna De Marco Torgovnick, Gary Totten, David van Leer, Asha Varadharajan, Orrin N. C. Wang, Sharon Willis, Louise E. Wright, Donald A. Yates, Takayuki Yokota-Murakami, Richard E. Zeikowitz, Angelika Bammer, Dale Bauer, Karl Beckson, Betsy A. Bowen, Stacey Donohue, Sheila Emerson, Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Jay L. Halio, Karl Kroeber, Terence Hawkes, William B. Hunter, Mary Jambus, Willard F. King, Nancy K. Miller, Jody Norton, Ann Pellegrini, S. P. Rosenbaum, Lorie Roth, Robert Scholes, Joanne Shattock, Rosemary T. VanArsdel, Alfred Bendixen, Alarma Kathleen Brown, Michael J. Kiskis, Debra A. Castillo, Rey Chow, John F. Crossen, Robert F. Fleissner, Regenia Gagnier, Nicholas Howe, M. Thomas Inge, Frank Mehring, Hyungji Park, Jahan Ramazani, Kenneth M. Roemer, Deborah D. Rogers, A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff, Regina M. Schwartz, John T. Shawcross, Brenda R. Silver, Andrew von Hendy, Virginia Wright Wexman, Britta Zangen, A. Owen Aldridge, Paula R. Backscheider, Roland Bartel, E. M. Forster, Milton Birnbaum, Jonathan Bishop, Crystal Downing, Frank H. Ellis, Roberto Forns-Broggi, James R. Giles, Mary E. Giles, Susan Blair Green, Madelyn Gutwirth, Constance B. Hieatt, Titi Adepitan, Edgar C. Knowlton, Jr., Emanuel Mussman, Sally Todd Nelson, Robert O. Preyer, David Diego Rodriguez, Guy Stern, James Thorpe, Robert J. Wilson, Rebecca S. Beal, Joyce Simutis, Betsy Bowden, Sara Cooper, Wheeler Winston Dixon, Tarek el Ariss, Richard Jewell, John W. Kronik, Wendy Martin, Stuart Y. McDougal, Hugo Méndez-Ramírez, Ivy Schweitzer, Armand E. Singer, G. Thomas Tanselle, Tom Bishop, Mary Ann Caws, Marcel Gutwirth, Christophe Ippolito, Lawrence D. Kritzman, James Longenbach, Tim McCracken, Wolfe S. Molitor, Diane Quantic, Gregory Rabassa, Ellen M. Tsagaris, Anthony C. Yu, Betty Jean Craige, Wendell V. Harris, J. Hillis Miller, Jesse G. Swan, Helene Zimmer-Loew, Peter Berek, James Chandler, Hanna K. Charney, Philip Cohen, Judith Fetterley, Herbert Lindenberger, Julia Reinhard Lupton, Maximillian E. Novak, Richard Ohmann, Marjorie Perloff, Mark Reynolds, James Sledd, Harriet Turner, Marie Umeh, Flavia Aloya, Regina Barreca, Konrad Bieber, Ellis Hanson, William J. Hyde, Holly A. Laird, David Leverenz, Allen Michie, J. Wesley Miller, Marvin Rosenberg, Daniel R. Schwarz, Elizabeth Welt Trahan, Jean Fagan Yellin
-
- Journal:
- PMLA / Publications of the Modern Language Association of America / Volume 115 / Issue 7 / December 2000
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 October 2020, pp. 1986-2078
- Print publication:
- December 2000
-
- Article
- Export citation
Private security forces and African stability: the case of Executive Outcomes
- Herbert M. Howe
-
- Journal:
- The Journal of Modern African Studies / Volume 36 / Issue 2 / June 1998
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 01 June 1998, pp. 307-331
- Print publication:
- June 1998
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
The end of the Cold War has had contradictory effects on African security. Southern Africa and Ethiopia clearly benefitted from the end of superpower rivalry, whereas central and western Africa have seen an upswing of violence during the 1990s. The withdrawal of foreign patronage, the post-Somalia reluctance of the West and the UN to intervene militarily, heightened external demands for economic and political reform, and the changing nature of African insurgencies, have placed additional pressure on already weak governments. Many African states have only weak militaries to defend their security, the collapse of Mobutu Sese Seko's Armed Forces of Zaïre providing the most recent example.
As recently as 1990, the idea of African states relying upon mercenaries from the former South African Defence Force (SADF) would have seemed both preposterous and insulting. Yet since 1993, Executive Outcomes (EO), the world's largest and best known ‘mercenary’ group, has marketed itself as a defender of African state security in this post-Cold War era. A private army with access to some 2,000 ex-South African Defence Force (SADF) combat veterans, EO has helped to defeat discredited insurgencies in Angola and Sierra Leone. Large sections of Africa need effective militaries and EO, which claims to fight only for sovereign governments, presents itself as a stabilising force for African development. To some observers, EO is ‘with the possible exception of the South African army, the most deadly and efficient army operating in sub-Saharan Africa today’.
This article examines the controversial Executive Outcomes military as a security option for African governments. It sketches EO's history, its military effectiveness, and its political loyalty, to assess whether EO threatens or assists African state stability. The article concludes by looking at EO's possible future, and the lessons which it offers about African security.
The South African Defence Force and Political Reform
- Herbert M. Howe
-
- Journal:
- The Journal of Modern African Studies / Volume 32 / Issue 1 / March 1994
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 11 November 2008, pp. 29-51
- Print publication:
- March 1994
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
South Africa's security establishment, specifically the South African Defence Force (S.A.D.F.), illustrates important linkages between national security and political reform. The military and police influence reconciliation, for better or for worse, in all post-conflict states, especially those experiencing an interregnum between authoritarianism and hoped-for democracy, and in which no undisputed ‘winner’ has yet emerged. Alexis de Tocqueville noted long ago that ‘the most perilous moment for a bad government is one when it seeks to mend its ways’, Reform and political change, as Samuel Huntington observes, ‘may contribute not to political stability but to greater instability …[and] encourages demands for still more changes which can easily snowball’. Both suddenly unrestrained popular demands and forces loyal to the ancien régime (including the military) may threaten the process and outcome of reform.