Cilliers, Jakkie, ed. Dismissed: Demobilisation and Reintegration of Former Combatants in Africa. Midrand: Institute for Defence Policy, 1995.
With the end of the Soviet era and the emergence of the current trend of rationalizing military forces around the world, one of the least examined regions where this is taking place is in Africa. One of the world's greatest battlegrounds during the Cold War with that continent's "proxy wars" of the 1970s and 1980s, many African states are currently conducting a massive reintegration and demo bilization process with their security forces. This process has been largely over -looked by the Northern community, yet it is in these states that the most difficult tasks of reintegration and demobilization lie, due to the very nature of the some times tribal, sometimes ideological, but always political wars that gripped most states over the past three decades.
Clearly, South Africa's reintegration and demobilization process has been one of the most studied recently, yet South Africa is but the latest in a number of regionally-powerful states that have undergone this transformation. This latest book from the Institute for Defence Policy, South Africa's premiere defence and security studies organization, is one of the best examinations of this process in Africa. In South Africa itself, the growing public debate over the means and limits of such rationalization has led to one of the most participatory processes of rationalization, resulting in a highly-successful reintegration process that has been largely unproblematic throughout the first two years of the rationalization proc ess. As with most other African states that have undertaken (and, indeed, are still undertaking) the process, such an exercise has required not only the aforemen tioned demobilization and downsizing of forces in the new era, but as well the integration of former adversaries into the new national defence forces of each nation. This task has involved matching highly-differing levels of training and professionalism (from regular troops to guerrilla forces and street security units) in order to establish competent and cohesive new fighting units. In some cases, as in Angola, this process is just now beginning.
Dismissed offers a comprehensive examination of nine of these countries. South Africa's experiences, captured in a chapter entitled, "Rightsizing: The Challenges of Demobilisation and Social Reintegration in South Africa" by Tsepe Motumi (Department of Defence) and Andrew Hudson (IDP), has involved the integration of seven former armed forces, ranging from the South African Defence Forces and Umkhonto we Sizwe (the ANC/SACP guerrilla arm) to the former homeland armies and the Pan Africanist Congress' Azanian Peoples' Liberation Army (APLA). With the beginning of the reintegration process in 1993 to the subsequent transfer of command and control of the forces from the ANC/PAC to the newly-formed SA National Defence Force in April 1994, including the entry of the British Military Advisory Training Team (BMATT) into the process in May 1994, the reintegration process has been largely, with the exception of a few strikes and political clashes, unproblematic. Motumi and Hudson trace the process through its political agreement in the Transitional Executive Council prior to the April 1994 election, through the striking of the Certified Personnel Register used to determine those personnel from these forces who were eligible for in tegration, to the assembly of the former enemies into their intake units. While the integration and demobilization process is slated to cover six years (to 1999), the rationalization of the SANDF from a high of 135,000 following integration is only now beginning. To aid in the demobilization, the SANDF has included a National Service Corps in its structures to provide training and education to those former guerrillas who have not been included in the new structures. This unit will be essential to ensuring that these demobilized fighters, from all sides, are not dropped cold on a society already experiencing more than 50 percent unemployment, massive housing and social service shortages, and an unstable security regime.
Much like South Africa, Zimbabwe underwent a similar process from 1980 to 1987. In chapters entitled, "Demobilisation and Integration: 'Operation Merger' and the Zimbabwe National Defence Forces, 1980-1987," by Martin Rupiah (University of Zimbabwe) and "The Ambiguities of Democracy: The Demobi lisation of the Zimbabwean Ex-Combatants and the Ordeal of Rehabilitation 1980-1983," by Muchaparara Musemwa (University of South Africa), this process is examined. Zimbabwe, with its similar history to South Africa's in terms of the transition from white-minority rule under Ian Smith's Rhodesia to Robert Mugabe's newly-founded republic of Zimbabwe in 1980, is reflective of many of the same changes and hurdles that South Africa has encountered on its road to full democ racy. Rupiah's chapter traces the military situation that faced voters in the March 1980 elections in Rhodesia, and the diversity of forces arrayed against each other, from the government RSF to the rebel FRELIMO, ZANLA and ZAPU forces, as well as ANC cadres, SADF 'independent units' and a French Foreign Legion contingent. However, with the participation of a BMATT team assisting the new Joint High Command, Mugabe's ZANU(PF) landslide election victory assured a generally smooth transition and integration process. Rupiah's coverage of the issues involved in the integration and demobilization proccess is comprehensive, and reflective of many of the same issues that are making the headlines in South Africa today. Musemwa's complimentary chapter goes into further detail with the demobilization and rehabilitation into society processes, especially Operation 'Seed' (Soldiers Employed in Economic Development), which was a forerunner to the SANDF's National Service Corps. As well, he looks in detail at the issues of payment for former combatants, the impact of unemployment, the social reintegration of female combatants (an especially difficult process), and the key issue of the emergence of the Zimbabwean Veterans' Association (ZWVA) and its political clout over Mugabe's government.
While similar to the process encountered in Zimbabwe, the experience of Mozambique has been substantially different due to the overwhelming influence of outside intervention, either through Cold War proxy armies or through direct intervention, as in the case of SADF units infiltrating Mozambique in their war with MK and APLA. Michael Stephen's (Staffordshire University) chapter on the Mozambican reintegration process that followed the October 1992 General Peace Agreement ending Mozambique's long civil war discusses in some detail the attempted formation of the Mozambican Defence Forces (FADM) from the forces of RENAMO and FRELIMO. The process became protracted, bogged-down in disputes over political niceties, the hesitancy of the international community to continue funding a process whose cost was rising far above its original estimates (by December 1994, it had received only 28 percent of the promised funds), and the failure by both sides to secure proper enumeration of their forces. As Stephen points out, part of this failure was due to the fact that large numbers of these demobilized personnel left the staging areas prematurely in search of work in the urban centres. There is also the issue of 800 so-called "boy soldiers," who made up roughly 2 percent of the total street children population in Mozambique; without their reuniting with their families or being properly cared for, the pos sibility of upheaval among the more than 5,000 unaccompanied children in the country at the end of the war is great. Finally, there is also great fear that the continued existence of large weapons caches (for both sides) throughout the country could also contribute to a resurrection of hostilities.
The other major experience to closely reflect South Africa's is that of Namibia. When the war ended with Namibia's independence following the 1990 peace accords and South Africa's withdrawal (matched by Cuba's from Angola), a Development Brigade was established to allow for demobilized former com batants to receive training and education prior to their reintegration into society. Within its first four years (to 1994), more than 4,000 personnel had passed through the Brigade; however, these numbers could have been greater had the Brigade been properly funded and equipped to undertake the training required. The solution to these problems, as Simon Shikangalah (Development Brigade Corporation) points out, was found in the 1992 conversion of the Brigade to a parastatal organization, incorporating it for profit. The success rate for their employment has been around 90 percent, but management skills and financial assistance continues to be lacking.
Other chapters examine similar experiences that have occurred in the Horn of Africa, centring on Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, where such processes have (with the exception of Somalia) so far been successful, and in Uganda where Emilio Mondo (Uganda Veterans' Assistance Board) traces the general success of the integration process following the National Resistance Movement's victory in 1986. It's army, the National Resistance Army, has been by-and-large converted successfully into a peacetime force, and a quite successful Ugandan Veterans' Assistance Programme introduced to assist ex-combatants with their integration into society. More information on the integration process is provided in Paul Collier's (Oxford University) chapter on the 'economics of transition' in Uganda and Ethiopia. Collier examines in depth the impact of demobilization on society, discussing crime and instability as they relate to the process, as well as the larger impact the process has had on employment and job creation, labor-force skill levels, and provisions to deal with disabled veterans in Uganda.
This compilation effectively provides the researcher with a good back ground of information on not only the demobilization processes themselves in many of the countries, but as well an examination of what happens to many of the veterans upon the completion of the process and their integration into society. This last aspect is the most overlooked in studies of such processes, and as such, particularly given the focus of this book on Africa the most overlooked continent generally in security studies this volume makes a much-needed and considered contribution to an issue that is of increasingly critical consideration in the post -Soviet era.
Kevin A. O'Brien
Hussar International Research Group