In the late 1970s, at the age of nineteen, Oiva Angula left his home in Windhoek and went into exile in Angola, where he joined SWAPO’s military wing, PLAN. After working for the movement as a political instructor, he was wrongly branded an apartheid spy and traitor during a series of purges within the organisation. SWAPO Captive is Angula’s terrifying account of betrayal and torture by his comrades, and his imprisonment for four and a half years in the omalambo – the hidden pits in Lubango, Angola, into which he, along with many others, was cast and left to die. SWAPO Captive threads together personal narrative and national history, including Angula’s childhood in South West Africa, the rising tensions sparked by apartheid rule, his father’s role in early liberation movements, and his own politicisation and decision to join the struggle. He gives fascinating accounts of life in a PLAN training camp, political education in the Eastern Bloc, and a cadre’s role in the war for independence. Most of all, this is a story about endurance and courage among people who were cruelly imprisoned, about their camaraderie and hope that one day they would face their captors as free men and women. Angula challenges the ‘wall of silence’ imposed after independence in Namibia with respect to possible war crimes committed by SWAPO, exposing the dark past of a party that claimed to fight for freedom for all.

In the global context of the Cold War, the relationship between liberation movements and Eastern European states obviously changed and transformed. Similarly, forms of (material) aid and (ideological) encouragement underwent changes over time. The articles assembled in this volume argue that the traditional Cold War geography of bi-polar competition with the United States is not sufficient to fully grasp these transformations. The question of which side of the ideological divide was more successful (or lucky) in impacting actors and societies in the global south is still relevant, yet the Cold War perspective falls short in unfolding the complex geographies of connections and the multipolarity of actions and transactions that exists until today. Acknowledging the complexities of liberation movements in globalization processes, the papers thus argue that activities need to be understood in their local context, including personal agendas and internal conflicts, rather than relying primarily on the traditional frame of Cold War competition. They point to the agency of individual activists in both "Africa" and "Eastern Europe" and the lessons, practices and languages that were derived from their often contradictory encounters. In Southern African Liberation Movements, authors from South Africa, Portugal, Austria and Germany ask: What role did actors in both Southern Africa and Eastern Europe play? What can we learn by looking at biographies in a time of increasing racial and international conflict? And which "creative solutions" need to be found, to combine efforts of actors from various ideological camps? Building on archival sources from various regions in different languages, case studies presented in the edition try to encounter the lack of a coherent state of the art. They aim at combining the sometimes scarce sources with qualitative interviews to give answers to the many open questions regarding Southern African liberation movements and their connections to the "East".

Every war has at least one - a unit so different, so daring, that it becomes the stuff of which legends are made and heroes are born. Among the South African forces fighting in Angola from 1975 to 1989, that unit was 32 Battalion. Founded in utmost secrecy from the vanquished remnants of a foreign rebel movement, undefeated in 12 years of front-line battle, feared by enemies that included both conventional Cuban armies and Namibian guerrilla fighters, the Buffalo Soldiers became the South African army’s best combat unit since World War II, with no fewer than 13 members winning the highest decoration for bravery under fire. But when peace broke out in southern Africa, the victors of Savate became the victims of sophistry. Their fate and future determined by politicians who understood little and cared less about this truly unique fraternity, 32 Battalion ceased to exist in 1993, its short history and long list of battle honours known only to those whose enemies called them Os Terriveis - the Terrible Ones. Now, for the first time, the story of 32 Battalion can be told in full, with neither adornment nor apology, by one of its longest-serving members. The book draws from top secret documents, revealing information that has never been made public before. Also included are rare photographs that evoke the colourful, and often controversial, history of 32 Battalion, as well as detailed maps depicting specific operations and deployments.

Bringing together a group of international scholars, The Handbook of African Intelligence Cultures provides the first review of intelligence cultures in every African country. It explores how intelligence cultures are influenced by a range of factors, including past and present societal, governmental and international dynamics. In doing so, the book examines the state’s role, civil society and foreign relations in shaping African countries’ intelligence norms, activities and oversight. It also explores the role intelligence services and cultures play in government and civil society.

The author looks at how Namibia was founded as a German colony known as Deutsch-Südwestafrika (German South-West Africa) and how it evolved into a nation. He explains how it was founded on brutal suppression of the indigenous people, including extermination of large numbers of some groups, and how, on becoming a colony of South Africa, its people continued to be subjected to brutal treatment by the white minority rulers who denied them racial equality. The author also focuses on the liberation struggle against apartheid and how the country won independence from apartheid South Africa. He also looks at how the leaders of the new nation are trying to build the country and construct a national identity on the basis of unity in diversity. It is an analysis of identity formation at the national level, and consolidation of the state, whose relevance is continental in scope: studies of other African countries in their quest for unity and construction – or reconstruction – of their national identities during the post-colonial era can benefit from this work. It is also a work of comparative analysis in terms of nationhood in the African context and how Namibia and Tanzania – two case studies – have sought to construct their national identities, the obstacles they have faced and continue to face in the quest for national unity, especially in the case of Namibia, and why Tanzania has been more successful than most countries on the continent in building a cohesive society where tribalism is virtually non-existent, enabling it to consolidate its unity and national identity. The author also looks at the concept of national character and its relevance to national identity formation and why the national identities of different African countries are weak and what can be done to address the problem. It is also an introductory text which may be helpful to some people who are going to Namibia for the first time although it is essentially a scholarly work intended for members of the academic community and specialists in some fields dealing with this southwest African country and its people. But members of the general public who want to learn more about Namibia may also find the book to be useful.

For more than a decade, Jacques Pauw has traversed his native continent in pursuit of warlords and drug traffickers, child soldiers and charlatans, adventure and anarchy. What he found was a rich array of personalities and a panoply of stories, ranging from the profoundly tragic to the intensely personal. Pauw’s stories range from South Africa to Rwanda, from Sierra Leone and the Sudan to Mozambique. Readers are taken behind the scenes of sensational news reports with compassion, humour and occasional cynicism and emerge in the knowledge that, even if it’s true that there is nothing new out of Africa, the writer has found fresh ways to present time-honoured tales of love, life, misery and mortality.