Aid and Development in Southern Africa: British Aid to Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland

Abstract

invasion and is now irrelevant or of historical interest only, although it does include a useful typology of actors and conflict determinants. It describes the impossibility of reform and the escalation in the level of conflict, arms race, and external support. Using sipri's extensive 'registers' it points to South Africa's regional military dominance but also notes the ecological limitations on the exercise of power. Its empirical analysis suggests that further conflict and radicalization are likely in the region. By contrast the eiu special report examines continuities in regional exchange, investment, and infrastructure, indicating the constraints on escalation and social change. Unlike the disjointed, heavy style of the sipri book, this text is succinct and readable; like the sipri analysis it too is largely descriptive but its policy implications are also clear. Its preoccupation with the economic issue-area leads to a particular concern for communication and integration. The eiu presents an economic explanation and justification for regional detente and focuses on the central 'accord' between South Africa and Zambia. Like sipri, it is less concerned with the prospects of the small black states of Southern Africa, but it is highly informed and persuasive about the political economy of major regional actors, dealing particularly with the salient issues of dependence on trade, capital, technology, and labour and with the issues of parastatals, transit, and regional instability. Together these two new monographs advance our understanding of Southern Africa but the eiu 'political economy' perspective tends to be more persuasive than the sipri 'power politics' approach; the former's focus on exchange and inequalities provides the major reason for the radicalization and escalation described in the latter.