Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK): The ANC’s Armed Wing, 1961–1993

Launched in 1961 by leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa and the South African Communist Party (SACP), Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) was the military wing of the ANC until its disbandment in 1993. The initial stage of MK’s armed struggle involved sabotage against government installations and other symbols of the apartheid regime by a small group of operatives. Under increasing repression by the apartheid state, and thanks to the support received from African and socialist countries, MK adopted a strategy of guerrilla warfare as armed struggle assumed an increasingly central role in the liberation struggle, although the military was understood as an extension of political work, that is, linked to the reinvigoration of political struggle and organizations. Geopolitical constraints prevented MK from waging a conventional guerrilla war, and from the 1970s MK adjusted its strategy by turning to armed propaganda and people’s war. While debates on the role of MK in South Africa’s liberation are often reduced to the relative success or failure of military strategy and action, the history of MK remains a sensitive topic post-apartheid, carrying significant weight both symbolically and in the lives of thousands of people who served in its ranks, including women, who joined and participated in MK throughout the three decades of its existence.

Women in Central America since Independence

In the struggle to reduce gender inequalities, women were recognized as having rights during the liberal reform movements and achieved greater access to education in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They then began to form their own organizations, demand voting rights, and join major social struggles. In the mid-twentieth century, women began to modernize their living conditions in the context of the Cold War, development policies, and broader access to contraceptive methods that allowed them greater control over their reproductive capacity. At the same time, they gained a greater foothold in the labor market and education, began to become professionals, and joined movements promoting the democratization of their societies, including through armed struggle. Beginning in the 1990s, pro-feminist laws and institutions were created throughout the region, against which conservative religious and neoliberal forces have pushed back. Despite important gains, the progress achieved by women has been strongly influenced by class, ethnic, generational, and geographical differences, so young, urban, White, and mixed-race women of the middle and upper classes have been able to take better advantage of the new opportunities than have their indigenous, Afro-descendant, rural, working-class, and older counterparts.

Non-Violence, Armed Struggle and Politics: A Conversation with Ronnie Kasrils

Based on interviews with Ronnie Kasrils, a former anc military commander and former intelligence minister in South Africa, this article examines that country’s struggle against apartheid. It looks at the interplay between violent and non-violent forms of resistance, explains the reasons for the anc and other South African liberation movements adopting the armed struggle after almost half a century of commitment to non-violence, and discusses the dilemmas within the movement in trying to ensure that the military component of the struggle always remained subservient to the political. The article also looks at the development of the political underground in South Africa, and its role, together with the armed struggle, in effecting the end of apartheid. Kasrils also discusses the period of political negotiations in South Africa, from 1990 to 1994, and the relationship between that and on-the-ground struggles – both armed and unarmed.

RIGHT OF REBELLION: ON THE PROBLEMS OF REHABILITATION OF PARTICIPANTS IN ANTI-SOVIET REBELLIONS IN KAZAKHSTAN

Many participants in the anti-Soviet uprisings of the Kazakhs have not yet been rehabilitated. The obstacle to this is the norms of the laws of the Republic of Kazakhstan, which do not allow the rehabilitation of persons who participated in armed struggle and murders of representatives of the authorities and the military. At the same time, in international and national law there is such an institute as jus resistendi - the right of resistance or the right to rebellion. This legal institution enables the rehabilitation of participants of anti-Soviet uprisings due to the recognition of their natural and inalienable rights.

“Ukraine’s glory has not yet died, nor her freedom has” (to the question of the Ukrainian statehood “renaissance”)

The problem of the "revival" (renaissance) of the Ukrainian statehood has been the focus of attention for centuries. On the other hand, Ukrainian intellectual discourse has not been able formulate an integral and consolidated image of the past. A significant obstacle on this path was the state policy of memory of an ad hoc nature, which was built through a combination of Soviet and Ukrainian approaches to the interpretation of the past. The lack of a unifying historical narrative, the regionalization of history interpretations of Ukraine have fueled interpersonal and interregional hostility within Ukrainian society for decades. It has become a fertile ground for the humanitarian aggression of neighboring countries, aimed at desubjectivation of Ukraine through destruction of historical foundations of statehood in public consciousness of the Ukrainians themselves. The points of their spokesmen are reinforced by arguments of the conservative pro-Ukrainian historians, who, trying to consider the history of Ukrainian statehood in the context of general civilization development, have developed the thesis of “non-historical” Ukrainian nation due to interruption of national existence in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. This approach, as shown in the article, was important for raising attention of global community to the Ukrainian issue in the second half of the twentieth century, even though it did not reflect the real case. After all, even at the time of strengthening of assimilation policy on the part of neighboring states, Ukrainians did not have the interruption of national existence and continued to cultivate diverse ideas of "revival" and development of their own statehood. Such desire was especially evident in the seventeenth century due to active position of the Cossacks, who managed to wield influence on all segments of Ukrainian population, raising it to an armed struggle for their own freedom and statehood. The inability of the Cossacks to fully implement the tasks gave rise to notes of pessimism in the minds of Ukrainians, whose faith in the revival of their own statehood faded away, but never waned at all. Cherishing the former Cossack greatness, Ukrainians, contrary to the assimilationist policy of the ruling nations or stratums, have always found the strength to speak out reminding themselves and the world that “Ukraine`s glory has not died, nor her freedom”, and therefore they will defend their own statehood.

The New Baloch Militancy: Drivers and Dynamics

Since the early 2000, Balochistan is yet again embroiled in a cobweb of violence after a hiatus of more than two decades. The Baloch nationalist militancy began to reinvigorate after the seizure of power by General Pervez Musharraf in 1999. Musharraf marginalised the moderate Baloch nationalists and repressed dissident voices. The differences over power and resource sharing escalated quickly into a full-blown armed struggle once Musharraf used indiscriminate force to subdue opposition against his regime. This article examines the proximate and long-term structural factors that led to the resurgence of armed militancy at the turn of the twenty-first century. It analyses the new drivers and dynamics of the present conflict that make it more virulent and lend it a distinctive character.