Counterinsurgency's Impact on Transitions from Authoritarianism: The Case of South Africa

Abstract

Counterinsurgency's impact on transitions from authoritarianism remains poorly understood and under-theorized. Using archival sources and interviews with ex-rebels, this paper examines the apartheid counterinsurgency programme's hidden history. A programme of clandestine violence and intelligence operations orchestrated at the regime's highest military and political echelons, it intensified during the 1990–1994 transitional period. This paper analyses its impacts on the state and its security sector during and after the negotiated transition. By marginalizing former rebels with high popular legitimacy, counterinsurgency compromised South Africa's process of security sector reform, while helping to preserve entrenched criminal networks and racist tendencies within the police and army. This has perpetuated institutional illegitimacy and corruption, and weakened security sector responses to South Africa's post-transition surge of violent crime, thereby undermining democratic consolidation. Apartheid counterinsurgency has also left lasting impacts at the social capital and participatory levels, contributing to the erosion of trust between civil society and the state.

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful for comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper from Aisha Ahmad, Juliet Johnson, Theodore McLauchlin, Khalid Medani, Steve Saideman, and Ora Szekely at McGill University, and wishes to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Note*Department of Political Science, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Email: [email protected]

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniel Douek

Department of Political Science, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.