Material Witness: Doris Salcedo's Practice as an Address on Political Violence through Materiality / History of Art and Architecture

The aim of the dissertation is to analyse the concept of international terrorism in Africa from 1990-2004 at a continental level and then investigate the extent of measures developed to counteract this threat. The dissertation puts forward four assumptions to be explored and tested: <ul> <li>Africa’s unstable political, economic and social structures cause weaknesses within the continent which international terrorist organisations can exploit and use to their own advantage. </li> <li>Africa’s history of civil wars makes the continent an easy target for international terrorist organisations to garner support for their organisations. </li> <li>The current counter-terrorism policies and measures are not effective enough to deter international terrorism on the African continent, as in some countries there is still an ongoing struggle for political control. </li> <li>The “Global War on Terrorism” has played a supportive role in Africa’s counter-terrorism policies. </li> </ul> The analysis investigates why international terrorism occurs in Africa, and which factors facilitate this. To achieve its aim, the study focuses on aspects such as the historical background of international terrorism in Africa; the current international security and terrorist environment; the present African security environment; and international and continental counter-terrorist policies within Africa. This dissertation aims to illustrate the issues facing Africa in combating and curbing international terrorist activities on the continent. It describes attempts by international and continental organisations to develop measures designed specifically to establish counter-terrorist agencies and policies in Africa. / Dissertation (Master of Security Studies)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Political Sciences / unrestricted

Competitive national elections can play a significant role in the consolidation process of developing and established democracies alike. Nevertheless, if not handled adequately, they have the potential to bring long-existing, existential conflict lines to the surface. This electoral conflict, becoming manifest in election violence, has the potential to shy people off from voting and negatively affect their attitude towards elections and democracy in general. The present study examined the ways in which violent electoral conflict affected the political participation and the personal attitudes towards democracy of ordinary Kenyan citizens. Kenya has experienced violent electoral conflict repeatedly since the re-introduction of competitive elections in 1992 and became one of its prime examples due to the devastating 2008 post-election clashes. In order to answer the research questions, 32 semi-structured interviews with 34 victims of electoral violence coming from four main ‘hotspot areas’ of the 2008 post-election violence as well as four expert interviews were conducted. The study finds that the experience of violent electoral conflict led to diametrically opposed reactions in the behaviour of political participation among respondents. About two-thirds of them indicated a change in their behaviour of political participation. With 33% of the respondents found to be “participating more”, this group even outnumbers its “participating less” counterpart (30%). This finding is rather surprising as the experience of electoral violence is usually associated with the tendency to shy off from political participation, not only in Kenya. Based on their attitudinal dispositions towards democracy in general and towards democracy in Kenya more specifically, as well as towards Kenyan elections, politics and politicians, a fourfold typology of Kenyan citizens was developed from the sample. It includes: the voting citizen, the resigned citizen, the passive citizen, and the active citizen. The voting citizen with no further interest in politics or political participation was found to be the most prevalent type of citizen in the sample. Attention needs to be taken towards the resigned citizen, which could, in case of further violent electoral conflict and the continuing marginalization of specific ethnic groups, cause a threat to the stabilization process of Kenya’s democracy. Contributions of this study were in designing a destination identity framework as well as in discovering the identity of the city of Nelson Mandela Bay. Directions for future studies include the possibility to conduct a qualitative study on place identity so as to obtain a more nuanced understanding of sub-identities in the city.

This study investigates the main causes of the present political crisis in Zimbabwe with particular reference to the crisis as a direct result of a crisis of authority or governance. The economy and the political environments in the former Rhodesia have been in a healthy state until the early 1990s when the ruling ZANU-PF had its rule under siege when the economy dwindled and the opposition became rife. The broad questions that the study sought to answer were: What have been the primary reasons for the political crisis in Zimbabwe between 1995 and 2005? What role has the political elite played in the country’s development? What contribution did the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme make to the economic development of Zimbabwe? Are there any other important factors that have played a role in the development process of Zimbabwe? As a way of investigation, this study uses qualitative research techniques to make a clinical examination of the main causes of the political crisis that has reduced the formerly self-sustaining and democratically highly rated country to a pariah citizen (state) of the world. A number of primary sources have been used and have had their responses/input supplemented by relatively reliable secondary sources that gave authenticity to the argument of the research. This study makes a ten year review of the political and economic situation in Zimbabwe, as this is the period whence the political crisis became apparent and restricts its investigation of the causes of the political crisis to this period albeit some of these reasons are connected to the past i.e. the period from 1980 to 1995. Since this is a deductive scholarly account, the study tests the theory of organic crisis as an explanation for state collapse in Africa with particular reference to Zimbabwe. Finally the study reveals that the major causes of the political crisis in Zimbabwe are the colonial legacy which seems to have had its negative on the politics of the country just ten years into democracy; the crisis of governance which led to political and economic decay as the ruling party tried by all means to solicit political support; the Lancaster House agreement and the land question which are related to the question of colonial legacy and among the primary reasons Zimbabwe has reached political impasse; the crisis of elites which this directly links to the political crisis; structural adjustment programmes and corruption and fraud.

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This thesis aims to create a novel dataset on political violence to estimate the accurate number of political violence incidents and fatalities in Turkey: Political Violence in Turkey Event Dataset (POLVITED). I argue that the reporting bias and differences in the scopes and definition of event datasets impact the quantitative study of conflict and violence. To eliminate the reporting bias and create a comprehensive dataset on political violence, I apply Matching Event Data by Location, Time and Type (MELTT) method to the Global Terrorism Database(GTD) and Uppsala Conflict Data Programme (UCDP-GED). The finding suggests that UCDP-GED were able to record 65% of the total number of political violence incidents in Turkey, and GTD was able to record 45% of them while 10% is coded in both datasets. POLVITED enables the researchers to capture the accurate picture of political violence incidents in Turkey by eliminating the double recording and alleviating the reporting bias. Lastly, the comparison of POLVITED and official reports demonstrates that, although the reporting bias is inevitable, integration alleviates the problems associated with it by increasing the coverage of the dataset.

Violence targeting politically active women is increasingly researched and recognised as a barrier to gender equal political participation. Previous studies on political violence targeting women have tended to focus on women in formal politics and mostly on the prevalence of violence rather than the impact it has on actors who continue to navigate violent political contexts. This case study uses semi-structured, digital interviews with eighteen Colombian women human rights defenders, focusing on their appraisal of (gendered) political violence and the coping strategies they use to navigate their political space. It finds that both strategies that involve taking up more political space and strategies with a silencing impact are used. For women human rights defenders in Colombia, their geographical conditions and access to resources, especially networks, are important factors to take into account when describing their possibilities to cope with political violence. Their perceptions of where and how gendered political violence occurs indicate that disproportionate impacts of political violence can be underestimated if research and policy does not account for the experiences of different groups of women. The thesis finds that studying lived experiences and micro-level mechanisms can contribute to the literature on macro-level phenomena such as barriers to participation, political violence and marginalisation.

The post-colonial period in many African countries was, and still is, marked by political breakdown, authoritarianism and war. African state institutions saw fragmentation, breakdown and in some cases, failure. For many Africanist scholars "state weakness" is a main cause for political violence. State weakness results from pre-colonial and colonial legacies which created authoritarian structures, supported the rise of autocratic political leaders and entrenched dysfunctional state practices. Dysfunctional state practices manifest themselves during civil wars when governments and national armies exploit and rape their civilian population, failing to provide security from rebel violence. This paper argues that dysfunctional state practices during civil war are enabled by a history of gender discourses and beliefs. In the wars of the Democratic Republic of Congo and in the Sierra Leonean war, when army soldiers abused and raped civilians, they were enabled by gendered hierarchies, norms and beliefs, which they employed to legitimize and normalize their actions.

The majority of the estimated four million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Colombia who have fled from their lands and homes have migrated to urban centers. This study, performed in Bogotá, Colombia between April and September 2009, examines how IDPs cope with living in a new, urban environment after violent displacement. I held interviews with IDPs, the non-displaced public, and government workers; performed participant-observation in government offices and neighborhoods; and examined archival material. The work examines cultural anthropological topics of violence, migration, and resistance. A discussion of state and structural violence reveals the current hardships many rural Colombians face. Analysis shows that symbolic violence manifests itself through 'othering' narratives and practices, which affect how IDPs resettle in Bogotá. The research demonstrates how IDPs' practices challenge state bureaucracy and government workers and refute the non-displaced public's stereotypes. IDPs agency both reproduces and transforms social structures in the city of Bogotá. I discuss how collective IDP agency leads to actions of resistance through public marches and takeovers. This research contributes to the field of anthropology by highlighting relations between power structures and individuals, examining how IDPs experience and resist symbolic violence, and demonstrating how IDPs create new identities in situations of forced migration.

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