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Table of Contents :
Health as a security issue: an African perspective. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31920/2050-4950/2018/v7n2a1
Robin Blake7
Health security, as an integral component of human security, is often problematic when African governments address communicable and non-communicable diseases which present as security issues. This article questions how a security issue is defined and advances a qualitative expression for describing a security issue in terms of a threat to a referent object, leading to a conclusion regarding politicisation or securitisation as a response. The qualitative expression is thereupon applied to non-communicable and communicable diseases ion the Africaan continent in order to formulate options for a government’s response supported by agency. The conclusion and recommendations concerning Africa’s health and security issues and the politicisation or securitisation thereof are twofold. Firstly, governments must use their agency to ensure they do not abdicate their responsibility by keeping, non-communicable diseases, such as malaria, and enduring communicable diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, within the politicised domain. Secondly, governments must use their agency to securitise health issues to contain and arrest as swiftly as possible, certain communicable diseases, such as Ebola, that spread rapidly. In this way inchoate solutions that lead to ill-informed and mistimed government interventions will be minimised.
This article interrogates discourses of distrust and victimhood in An Ordinary Man (2007), the autobiography of Paul Rusesabagina, hero of the award-winning feature film, “Hotel Rwanda”. The aim of the article is to highlight the ways in which such discourses have been engendered by historical inequities between Hutus and Tutsis as well as by institutional practices that serve the self-preserving interests of the country’s ruling elites. The article also explores the demonstrable implications of these discourses on Hutu-Tutsi relations in particular, and the country’s on-going social and political reconstruction in general, as these are reflected in Rusesabagina’s narrative. The discussion is set within the context of a representative depiction of recent and not-too-recent developments with particular regard to the state and national politics in Rwanda.
Where governments fail in their duty of protecting the lives and property (including livelihoods) of their citizens, there is often a resort to self-help. This paper examines whether and to what extent the spate and scale of organized lawlessness including terrorism that are attributed to the failure of government to secure and protect the lives and livelihoods of nationals and other legal residents can be explained in terms of governance failure. It views terrorism as a methodology for propagating preferred norms and values through violence. It locates governance failure in the origins and purpose of modern government and the zero-sum nature of electoral politics in Nigeria as well as the widespread non-adherence to established procedures as manifested in corruption and common theft among political and bureaucratic office holders. It argues that the forcible abolition of indigenous traditional governance structures alienated the governors from the governed, removed the humanizing cultural and traditional values which ensured mutual accountability, and transferred the source of authority of the ruler from the people to external forces. It recommends that the war against terrorism be taken beyond military and legal instruments to the realm of ideas and consciousness through education and socialization
School-based violence amongst learners in South Africa is a growing concern for all stakeholders involved in the school system. The escalation of violence leads to lower academic progression of learners. School-based violence needs to be curbed and schools should be a safe environments where learning and teaching takes place, not a battlefields where learners live in fear of being the next victims. The aim of this paper was to explore the influence of gangs on the extent of school violence in South Africa: A case study of Sarah Baartman District Municipality, Eastern Cape. A qualitative approach and an exploratory research design were used in conducting this study as these approaches allowed participants to share first-hand experiences regarding the issue under investigation. Purposive sampling method was employed to select participants for the study. Twenty five learners were selected to participate in this study to share their experience of gang violence in schools. The data obtained through semi-structured interviews were analysed thematically and supported by the relevant literature. The findings revealed that there are constantly escalating rates of sexual violence, physical violence, and vandalism on school property inflicted by gang members from both inside and outside the selected schools. Mainly, the aforementioned types of violence is caused due to excessive levels of substance abuse amongst these gang affiliates. It is, therefore, recommended that school security be increased and that the South African Police Services frequently patrol areas in which the respective schools are located.
Boko Haram, the terrorist group in Nigeria had on February 19, 2018 stormed Government Girl’s Science and Technical College (GGSTC), Dapchi in Yobe sState and abducted 111 girls. On 21st of March, 2018, the Federal Government of Nigeria announced the release of 105 girls. Five of the girls were said to have died before the release. The lone abducted Christian girl, Leah Sharibu, was not released due to her refusal to convert to Islam, as reported by the released girls. Ever since then, many Christian sAssociations like the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN),; Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN),; Evangelical Church of West Africa (ECWA) and others have been involveddulged in callssocial movements via the social media platforms for the release of Leah. It is, however, worrisome that these social movements notwithstanding, Leah Sharibu is yet to be released. The need to find out the nature of communication strategies used by Christian aAssociations in social media campaigns and whether the rhetorical devices in the campaigns are persuasive enough to ignite the needed actions for her release is the problem that this study intends to investigate. These issues therefore, necessitated the study. In analyzing the Facebook messages, rhetorical criticism was employed in studying selected messages posted between the months of February and April, 2018 on the case of Leah by Christian aAssociations. Findings indicate that the rhetorical devices used by Christian social movements through the social media are not persuasive and therefore not able to force the Federal Government of Nigeria to expedite actions that will lead amount to the release of Leah Sharibu as was the case in the 2012 Occupy Nigeria pProtest and the 2014 #BringBackOurGirls campaign. There was no call for offline activities in form of protests or rallies by the Christian groups. The study recommends that engagement on communication platforms, as well as rallies, protests, demonstrations, be used alongside with social media in social movements in Nigeria in fighting for the release of the abducted school girl and others in similar circumstances.
From its independence to date, the belief in the manifest destiny of Nigeria to lead Africa is common among its leaders, scholars and people. This messianic conjecture has guided Nigeria’s foreign policy narrative, informing its contributions to the socio-economic and political development of Africa. Nevertheless, apart from mere applauses and approbation, the Nigerian state is often berated for gaining far less in return on its human and material investment in Africa. This concern fuels current argument by scholars that Nigeria can apply its rich soft power potential to enhance its strategic interest in Africa. Yet, few literature have critically interrogated the linkage between soft power and Nigeria’s foreign policy. Arising from the foregoing, the paper investigates the nexus between soft power diplomacy and Nigeria’s interest in Africa by focusing on the linkages between the country’s huge investment on Technical Aid Corps (TAC) scheme in Africa and the election of Nigerian candidates to African Union positions. The paper adopts the qualitative methodology and utilize the Marxian political economy approach as its theoretical framework. Consequently, the authors argue that despite the benefits accrued on many levels, Nigeria has not fully optimized the potential value of TAC for projecting its foreign policy posture. The paper therefore concludes that access to TAC by African countries should be tied to conditions that protect and project Nigeria’s regional interest and that linking its foreign policy priorities with regional commitment through instruments such as TACs is imperative for an effective use of soft power in Africa
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