Book Description

The new South Africa, as well as the surrounding southern region, is finally free of apartheid and colonial rule. Civil wars have ended; democracy is everywhere. Economically, South Africa and the region are beginning to grow more rapidly than ever before. But serious impediments to sustainable growth and effective participatory government remain. President Nelson Mandela's African National Congress won a strong victory in South Africa's 1994 elections and has governed with skill and ambition ever since. Nevertheless, crime rates have soared, as have the number of illegal and conventional small arms, car hijackings, trade in drugs, illegal immigrants, and all manner of attacks on the political and social stability of the state. This book puts these serious societal problems in perspective and provides fresh answers and recommendations. The book includes chapters on crime rates and criminal syndicates, the proliferation of conventional arms, illegal populations movements, drug trafficking, the South African army, and a concluding chapter on African armies and regional peacekeeping. The contributors are Jacklyn Cock, University of the Witwatersrand; Robert Gelbard, Assistant Secretary of State for Drug Enforcement and Legal Affairs; Jeffrey Herbst, Princeton University; Mark Malan, Mark Shaw, and Hussein Solomon, Institute for Security Studies; Katherine Marshall, the World Bank; Steven Metz, U.S. Army War College; Greg Mills and Glenn Oosthuysen, South African Institute of International Affairs; C.J.D. Venter, South African Police Service; and Joan Wardrop, Curtin University, Australia. Copublished with the World Peace Foundation