Includes bibliography. / By 1998, after a full decade of declining defense budgets spanning both the late apartheid regime and the new democratic order, South Africa had fully halved military expenditure, in real terms, from its 1989 level. Through the process of negotiated transition to democracy in the early J 990s, it appeared as though advocates of demilitarization had taken the upper hand in setting the African National Congress (ANC) government's defense policy agenda. However, the government changed course drastically in 1998, initiating a massive arms acquisition program comprising submarines, frigate-class ""corvette"" patrol vessels, fighter jets and trainers, and helicopters, at a projected cost of nearly ZAR30 billion. This decision, consequently, has plagued the government with continued controversy since its implementation. What brought about this apparent defense policy reversal? Citing the lack of any significant external military threat to South Africa, dovish elements of civil society frame this controversial arms acquisition policy, entitled the Strategic Defence Procurement (SOP) program, as a classic ""guns or butter"" issue. The government, on the other hand, defends its decision by maintaining that the military procurements are vital to both the national security imperatives and economic growth of South Africa. In this vein, defense industrialists argue that weapons procurement deals containing counter-trade provisions help to stimulate the local economy-particularly the arms industry, transferring valuable technology and resources to one of South Africa's strategically-vital export industries which had suffered under the defense cutbacks in recent years-as well as foreign investment and job growth in civilian industrial sectors. This study addresses the complexities of the SOP-the ""arms deal"", in common parlance-through a systematic analysis that utilizes two distinct theoretical approaches to investigate the policy action from multiple perspectives, in order to illuminate issues that might otherwise remain buried in a single-level, single-approach analysis. The fundamental assumptions and concepts of the two theoretical approaches, the rational actor approach and the bureaucratic politics approach, focus on various issues embedded in the arms deal at discrete levels of analysis-the international systemic level. the state (organizational or bureaucratic) level, and the individual level-to generate a rough-cut account of the arms deal at each. The characteristic assumptions of both theoretical paradigms are applied to the South African case in order to generate an account of the arms deal at each level of analysis. This is done using empirical evidence gathered from primary sources such as government publications, policy reviews and other public documents, as well as from printed news media sources. The study's two fundamental objectives are to facilitate a better understanding of South Africa's arms acquisition decision and how it came about, and to provide a structured analytical framework for subsequent, comprehensive investigation of these issues by other students and analysts of South African politics and security. The scope of this study is necessarily limited to a primary focus on developing a structured framework and two-theory approach for multi-level analysis of the SDP, rather than on generating the exhaustive explanation that the framework potentially makes possible.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / This dissertation subsequently looks at the impact that mobile phone technology has for the political opportunities, mobilising structures and framing processes of a typical social movement in a developing country.

Since the end of the twentieth century, more and more countries have been confronted with how to deal with injustice from the past. Current governments are increasingly asked requested to assume accountability for crimes committed by their predecessors. Due to the growth of human rights, the discussion surrounding this, a more conscious society and the empowerment of victims, old cases are increasingly being exposed. This is also the case for the Dutch government. During the war of independence in Indonesia between 1945 and 1949, the population of this country fought to be released from under the Dutch rule. Later research would show that the Dutch army committed crimes there under the guise of 'an internal mission' to preserve the colony for the kingdom. After the war, it remained undiscussed, and successive Dutch governments even actively 'neutralised' the case. Later, when a clearly defined group of victims emerged, the Dutch government had to deal with it differently. In the spirit of the global developments concerning human rights and interest in history, the Dutch government took some tentative steps in addressing the Indonesian issue. Real changes however were enforced through a lawsuit filed by the aforementioned group of victims. These victims won their case, and the ruling established for the first time that the Dutch state had a responsibility towards the group of victims from Indonesia. Did this lead to a change in the Dutch governmental approach towards the Dutch violence during the independence war? Has anything actually changed over the years to this approach? This thesis examines the attitude and approach of successive Dutch authorities towards Dutch violence in Indonesia, divided over three periods: the five-decades post-war; the period 1995-2011 (in this last year the lawsuit was filed); and the time post-lawsuit.

Includes bibliography.

Includes bibliographical references. / The rapid economic advancement of emerging economies in the South has come to effect a change within the nature of the global South and within the traditional North-South relationship more broadly. One development representative of a change within the global South as a unit has been the emergence of smaller, ad hoc, issue specific South-South groupings comprising the exclusive membership of emerging economies. While rooted in a common historic agenda of enabling a more equitable distribution of power for the South with the North, such new groupings have been increasingly independent and detached from the rest of the developing world. As such, they represent the ambitions of its members to garner more economic and political power within international politics. The BASIC grouping consisting of Brazil, South Africa, India and China represents an example, formed at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen as a bloc opposition against the suggested implementation of binding emissions reduction obligations for emerging economies as part of the global South. BASIC argued that this was primarily an issue of equity, departing from the “Common but Differentiated Responsibilities” between developed and developing states as agreed under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992. While ostensibly arguing on behalf of the broader South, the formation of the BASIC grouping represents a detachment from the rest of the developing world, inspired in large by the growing economic and political ambitions of emerging economies. Inspired by the vestiges of a North - South relationship rooted in inequity and marginalisation, the formation of BASIC signifies a new direction of multilateralism that has come to define the changing nature of the global South, enabled by its increasingly powerful members.

Includes bibliographical references.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 58-63). / The purpose of this thesis is to address the question: how can memorialization contribute to social transformation? Specifically, in what ways is memorialization activist? To answer this question I worked with St. George’s Cathedral’s Crypt Memory and Witness Centre on their Bearing Witness exhibit, conducted primary and secondary literature surveys (namely academic articles and books, and periodicals from 1980-1986), story-telling focus groups and individual interviews. The exhibit group consisted of 17 former South African squatters who fasted at St. George’s Cathedral in 1982, demanding rights to live and work in Cape Town. Of the group of 17, I conducted personal interviews with seven women and three men.

This thesis compares how the South African Government, specifically the Department of Basic Education and the NGO Equal Education to see how these organizations work to promote gender equality. The study will contribute to a systematic comparison of approaches between the Department of Basic Education and Equal Education. This thesis will contribute to the literature by emphasizing the importance of quality education, and not only providing access. The comparison is done by evaluating different projects, explicitly and implicit within the organizations through Elaine Unterhalter’s two approaches: the resourcist approach and the structuralist approach. The evaluation of these projects and interventions has helped determine to which extent gender equality is promoted in each organization, but also which approach is utilized by whom and if they are complementary or not. Currently the trends of the South African government point towards the use of mainly resourcist approaches, while Equal Education uses mainly structuralist approaches. However, the government plans to eventually create a change in the current social structure to address its usage of a mostly resourcist approach. These initiatives and projects has been defined resourcist or structuralist mainly due to their method of measure, which is a major driving force in these projects. At this time the approaches chosen by each organization affect gender equality at different depths and a hybrid between the two is a recommendation although there have been implementation issues in relation to some projects. The conclusion references the capabilities approach to determine what type of hybrid might be the most suitable for the promotion of gender equality.

This study analyses the relationship between perceived marginalisation and the willingness of civilians to participate in, and justify political violence in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region. The dominant literature in this area tends to highlight political, economic and identity marginalisation as the causal factors behind political violence. However, there remains a lack of clarity in the conceptualisation and operationalisation of the purported political and socioeconomic marginalisations. This because large portion of the literature fails to take into account the psychological aspect of marginalisation. Using a statistical analysis of Afrobarometer1 survey data collected in 2003, the study applies two regression models to measure the predictive effects of 16 variables on attitudes towards both political violence justification and the willingness to participate in political violence in the Niger Delta. The benefit of survey methodology is it is a more accurate measurement of the term marginalisation, as marginalisation is perceived by people and is thus a psychological phenomenon. By disaggregating these broad marginalisation terms into discrete items, this study provides a more nuanced analysis of the motivating factors behind political violence. Interestingly, no measures of economic marginalisation were statistically significant in either model. Two elements of political marginalisation exhibited a statistically significant effect on the justification of political violence. Multiple aspects of political marginalisation and identity group prioritisation exhibited statistically significant effect on the willingness to participate in political violence, however not all items exhibited effects predicted by the majority of the literature. This analysis does confirm that the relationship between citizen and state is a salient predictor of attitudes towards political violence. However, the results also demonstrate that the blanket marginalisation terms used in political science literature are overly simplistic and lack nuance. Nevertheless, both scholars and policy makers should prioritise the government’s relationship with society when crafting policy designed to minimise political violence.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-105).