Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

The defence industry, built up during the apartheid years and during the UN embargoes on sales of arms to South Africa, became one of the most important sectors in the country's industrial base and a significant exporter. Since 1989 it has been shrinking and seeking to survive by a combination of downsizing, rationalization, mergers and joint ventures, internationalization, the promotion of exports, diversification and conversion of facilities to civil use. As in other countries, strategies of diversification and conversion have met with limited success. In the absence hitherto of any coherent government policy on defence industrial adjustment or on the impact of closures of companies, significant skills and technologies which were embodied in the defence industry have been lost or wasted. Indeed, in the absence of policy the opportunity to maximize the benefits of defence industrial conversion may have passed.

The analysis of the South African experience provides a valuable contribution to the international debate on the economic effects of military expenditure and defence industrialization and on the relationship between disarmament and development in developing countries.

Contents
1. Introduction: militarization, disarmament and demilitarization
2. Militarization and the development of the arms industry
3. The changing strategic, political and economic environment, 1989–94
4. Defence cuts and disarmament measures, 1989–94
5. Defence industrial adjustment, 1989–94
6. The changing security environment after 1994
7. Defence industrial adjustment after 1994
8. Strategies for conversion at the national level
9. Summary and conclusions

Appendix 1. SADF rationalization and restructuring measures
Appendix 2. Armscor organizational structure, 1992–93
Appendix 3. Denel organizational structure and diversification, 1992–93
Appendix 4. Background statistics

About the author
Peter Batchelor (South Africa) is a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Conflict Resolution, University of Cape Town, South Africa, and a coordinator of the Centre's Project on Peace and Security.

Susan Willett (UK) is a Senior Research Fellow and Associate Professor at the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute working on the Military Restructuring Project, which analyses all aspects of military adjustment in the post-cold war era.

Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN 0-19-829413-1 - hardback, 249 pp.
1998