Kronos: Southern African Histories
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Kronos: Southern African Histories is published annually by the Dept of History and the Centre for Humanities Research at UWC. It is an accredited South African journal that aims to promote and publicise high quality historical research on southern Africa. The journal also encourages comparative studies and seeks to break new ground in its dynamic integration of visuals and text.
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Browsing by Subject "Cold War"
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Item Decolonization of a special type: rethinking Cold War history in Southern Africa(History Department, University of the Western Cape, 2011) Lee, Christopher J.Introduction: This special issue of Kronos: Southern African Histories speaks to this imbalance, contributing in small measure to a recent turn in Cold War studies that has sought to incorporate regional perspectives found in area studies to readdress the parameters and politics of this extended period. Departing from the influential early work of scholars like John Lewis Gaddis � who helped to define the field of Cold War history in books such as The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 (1972) and Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (1982) � scholarship published over the past two decades has reached beyond an exclusive American-Soviet dynamic and a �great men� approach to history � whether Stalin or Eisenhower, among other leaders � to consider the role of social movements and popular trends, the factor of identity politics such as racial solidarity and, perhaps most significant, a broader political geography created through the global wave of decolonization after the Second World War. This change in focus can be attributed to a generational shift, as well as the end of the Cold War itself, which has resulted in the opening of archives and research areas previously unavailable. In fact, the expansion of Cold War history and diplomatic history more generally � at least in the American academy � has generated calls for renaming the field as �international history� in order to move Decolonization of a Special Type: Rethinking Cold War History in Southern Africa 7 attention away from nation-state interactions to examine instead patterns of social and cultural history that transcend the totalizing effect that the �Cold War period� as such has had.Item Rationalizing gukurahundi: cold war and South African foreign relations with Zimbabwe, 1981-1983(Published by University of the Western Cape, 2011) Scarnecchia, Timothy (Kent State University)This article examines the role of diplomatic relations during the first stages of the 1983 Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe. Based on a preliminary reading of South African Department of Foreign Affairs files for 1983, the article suggests that Cold War relations between Zimbabwe and the United Kingdom helped to provide cover for the Zimbabwean National Army�s Fifth Brigade�s campaign of terror. Similarly, American support for Mugabe�s claims to be a pro-Western leader committed to non-racialism helped provide international cover for the atrocities. At the same time, evidence shows high-ranking ZANU-PF officials negotiated with the South African Defense Forces in 1983 to cooperate in their efforts to keep ZAPU from supporting South African ANC operations in Zimbabwe. The 5th Brigade�s campaign therefore served the purposes of South Africa, even as ZANU-PF officials rationalized the Gukurahundi violence in international and anti-apartheid circles as a campaign against South African destabilization. The article suggests that the diplomatic history of the Gukurahundi can provide a useful lens for understanding the tragedy in both regional and international Cold War contexts.