Disarmament, Demobilization, Reintegration, Repatriation and Resettlement (DDRRR) in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa

Abstract

In the past three decades several African countries including Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa witnessed the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of troops, repatriation and resettlement of ex-combatants, refugees and/or internally displaced people (DDRRR) in a post-conflict setting. DDRRR processes affect and are affected by post-conflict peace building. However, current research on how DDRRR and peace building are intertwined and how DDRRR contributes to post-conflict peace building is still in its infancy. This thesis is a comparative study of how the nature of armed conflict, conflict terminating peace agreements and the conceptual, political, socio-economic and institutional frameworks under which DDRRR occurred influenced and impacted on the process in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa. The three countries experienced different but novel DDRRR processes. Britain and the Commonwealth played a pivotal role in Zimbabwe’s conflict termination and immediate post-liberation struggle DDRRR. In Namibia, DDRRR was implemented under a United Nations peacekeeping context. DDRRR was internally originated, locally owned and state-managed in South Africa from the early 1990s to the present. This was an accompaniment, and also a result, of a negotiated transition to democracy following no serious military engagement. Zimbabwe’s DDRRR was implemented during the Cold war era unlike in Namibia and South Africa. The study intersects these contextually different DDRRR case studies. It analyses the country-specific DDRRR programmes and strategies and evaluates their differential contribution to the broader peace building and reconstruction process. The thesis will then isolate applicable and practical determinants for successful post-conflict DDRRR for posterity based on a comparative examination of the three distinct cases.