Regionalization of security and the reconstruction of a region : the Southern African Development Community's (SADC) critical and ironic security dynamics

Abstract

This thesis’ central aim is to rethink regional security cooperation in southern Africa by transcending the geopolitics that has been characteristic to the region. The constructivist inspired regional security complex theory is thus preferred as an analytic device through which a non-statist understanding of security within the region could be conceived. Furthermore to understand how the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is involved in the (re)construction of the region, the region building approach is adopted although the thesis is mindful of the fact that this approach is relevant to regions that have high levels of regionality. Comprehension of the regional security cooperation could not be possible without deconstructing the taken-for-granted understanding of regional security cooperation. To this end, post-modern and post-structuralists traditions become sites in which the altered and reformulations of regional security cooperation can be imagined with the hope of re-imagining new interpretations of regional security politics. Thus, linguistically inspired methodology and methods are embraced in order to unmask the taken for granted understandings and transform them into objects of discussion and criticism. Therefore, SADC’s critical and ironic security dynamics are considered within the post-modern tradition without necessarily engaging in the aesthetics of this tradition. Zimbabwe as a case illuminates the limits of modernistic understanding of regional security cooperation. The thesis concludes by proposing regionalist understanding of security alternatives that are based on integrated analysis of security threats and preventative approach to responses.