The Pros And Cons Of Civil War

Arguments both for and against this paper could be made on theoretical grounds. On the one hand, one could argue, as Thompson (2007; 56) and Spalding (2009; 64), among others, asserts, that “interstate war (in contrast to civil war) can lead to a strengthening of states, by forcing participant states to strengthen their power in order to survive. On the other hand, it can be argued that “states or the state system have changed, and that war is unlikely to have such effects in contemporary conditions”. (Thompson 2007; Spalding 2009). As Mahmood Mamdani asserts: “we have just ended a century replete with violence. The twentieth century was possibly more violent than any other in recorded history. Just think of world wars and revolutions, and

It is violence that is neither revolutionary nor counter-revolutionary, violence that cannot be illuminated by the story of progress, that appears senseless to us. Not illuminated paradigmatically, non-revolutionary violence appears pointless. Unable to explain it, we turn our back on history. Two such endeavours are worth noting. The first turns to culture, the second to theology.

The cultural turn distinguishes modern from pre-modern culture and then offers premodern culture as an explanation of political violence. If revolutionary or counter-revolutionary violence arises from market-based identities such as class, then non-revolutionary violence is said to be an outcome of cultural difference”. (Mamdani, 1996; 133 - 35).

This paper takes the discussion of the links between race, war or violence and state formation as its starting point. It focuses on the conflict in South West Africa (Namibia) and Rwanda, and asks whether these conflicts have led to strengthening of the state in Rwanda and

In the milieu of fluidity ethnic consciousness and "way of life" may be created and reinforced to maintain the status quo at certain times and be transformed to embrace other social constructs at other times”. (Haug, 1998; 90).

3. POLITICAL VIOLENCE IN POST-COLONIAL AFRICA

Arendt argues that: “Of the two main political devices of imperialist rule, race was discovered in South Africa, and bureaucracy in Algeria, Egypt and India; the former was originally the barely conscious reaction to tribes of whose humanity European man was ashamed and frightened, whereas the latter was a consequence of that administration by which Europeans had tried to rule foreign peoples whom they felt to be hopelessly their inferiors and at the same time in need of their special protection”. (Arendt, 1975; 41). Race, in other words, was an escape into irresponsibility where nothing human could any longer exist, and bureaucracy was the result of a responsibility that no man can bear for his fellow man and no people for another