This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the Zimbabwean struggle for independence in its international context. It is an analysis of the crucial support given to the Zimbabwean nationalists by the five Frontline States, namely Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zambia.

Challenge to Imperialism is the first comprehensive analysis of the Zimbabwean struggle for independence in its international context. Based on extensive research in the southern African region and on interviews with the ZANU and ZAPU leaders in exile during the war, this study is an analysis of the crucial support given to the Zimbabwean nationalists by the five Frontline States-Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zambia. The book begins with a summary of the variable relations among the Frontline States and between those states and the Zimbabwean nationalists. More than once, Frontline governments put Zimbabwean nationalists in their own jails as tensions arose over leadership, conduct of the war, and terms for peace. Yet the Frontline States maintained their support in spite of the extremely high cost to their own economic development. How could these weak and economically dependent states confront the dominant interests in the region? Was Lancaster House simply a capitulation to imperialist interests, a constitution forced on the nationalists by the beleaguered Frontline States? This theoretical analysis addresses the complexity of these questions and suggests lessons for the current struggles in Namibia and in South Africa. Further, Dr. Thompson discusses the formation of the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) as an attempt to transform the Zimbabwean political victory into regional economic cooperation. This study of the political and economic background of Zimbabwean independence is important not only to those concerned about Zimbabwe and southern Africa, but also to those interested in the nature of liberation struggles and in the role of the state in developing countries.

Spanning the period from the cold war to the 'war on terror', examines the political economy dynamics of security and insecurity on the continent, as well as its implications for political actions. More than any other part of the globe, Africa has become associated with conflict, insecurity and human rights atrocities. In the popular imagination and the media, overpopulation, environmental degradation and ethnic hatred dominate accounts of African violence, while in academic and policy-making circles, conflict and insecurity have also come to occupy centre stage, with resource-hungry warlords and notions of 'greed' and 'grievance' playing key explanatory roles. Since the attacks of 9/11, there has also been mounting concern that the continent's so-called 'ungoverned spaces' will provide safe havens for terrorists intent on destroying Western civilization. The Review of African Political Economy has engaged extensively with issues of conflict and security, both analysing on-going conflicts and often challenging predominant modes of explanation and interpretation. This Review of African Political Economy Reader provides a timely, comprehensive and critical contribution to contemporary debates about conflict and security on the continent. The first section, covers some of the continent's main post-Cold War conflicts and demonstrates their global connections. The articles also discuss the so-called 'resource curse', as well as the global arms trade, and reveal the complexities of the relationship between the economic and the political. The second section focuses on security as part of post-Cold War global governance, and discusses the effects of liberal peace-building as well as the link between development assistance and the 'war on terror'. The final section examines life as it continues in conditions of war and shows how insecurity reconfigures urban space, transforms social order, identities and authority. Rita Abrahamsen is Professor in the Graduate School of Publicand International Affairs, University of Ottawa, Canada Published in association with ROAPE ROAPE African Readers Series Editors: Tunde Zack-Williams & Ray Bush