The Crisis in Southern Africa in the 1980s: New Research Perspectives

This issue of the «Rivista italiana di storia internazionale» focuses on the 1980s in Southern Africa, as a decade characterized not only by the continuation of national liberation struggles in South Africa and Namibia, but also by the need for the countries in the region to come to terms with a serious economic crisis. The situation in the region was made even more insecure by the destabilization policy undertaken by the South African government with the ultimate aim of ensuring the survival of the apartheid regime. The processes outlined above have, up until now, mostly been analyzed by scholars through the prism of international Cold War interference. Much attention has been devoted to the policies of Washington, Moscow, and Havana in support of perceived client states or national liberation movements in the region, either through the provision of economic and military aid or in the multiple rounds of peace negotiations for the stabilization of the regional political framework. In fact, the articles that make up this issue offer new archive-based interpretations of the historical events in Southern Africa during the 1980s, with a particular focus and emphasis on the specific political, economic, and military strategies pursued by African governments in the region, by virtue of local political priorities and forms of regional and continental concertation aimed at solving the crisis. These specific histories also foreshadow many of the problems and challenges of the post-Cold War political order. In this way, the governments of the region emerge as the protagonists as they confronted serious political, economic and military challenges by relying, as far as possible, on the support of international actors, who in turn were interested in influencing the end of hostilities in Angola, the decolonization process in Namibia, and the transition of South Africa to a democratic regime. In the face of these daunting political conflicts, regional leaders were attempting to establish development strategies that would work with their respective countries, as well as within the parameters of regional politics and their international alignments.