The focus of this paper is state violence. It is argued that South African state security strategy in the period 1984-1988 was characterised by an increasing violence which was sanctioned by law. This violence was either inscribed in the law or unrestrained by the law. It is mainly directed against anti-apartheid activists both within and without South Africa's borders.
In August 1986, JGJ van Vuuren, chief executive of Armscor, when interviewed about his upbringing and the background to his involvement in the armaments industry in South Africa, commented: My childhood was one of clay-pellet fights with the coloured boys and growing up with my parents' interests' (Finansies en Tegniek, 12.9.1986). This quotation provides an apt introduction to this chapter, which attempts to map out briefly the integration of the political and economic features of the developing armaments industry in South Africa.
This research project attempted to make a beginning at establishing whether structural violence did in fact play a significant part in the upbringing and experiences of those on Pretoria's death row. The project sought to construct a profile of the condemned prisoner. In order to establish biographical details, relatives and friends of 26 people on death row in 1988 were interviewed. The project also attempted to assess the legal road people had travelled to death row. Records were examined of the trials in which 40 people (including the 26 in the first sample) were sentenced to death. The samples drawn on were small, but it was hoped that the project was nevertheless a useful initial venture into an unchartered territory.
The author discusses the topic of growing up in violent situations from a number of perspectives. Firstly, she gives a psychological perspective to the notion of resilience, invulnerability or stress resistance, as she thinks that the psychological factors form a crucial base from which to consider long term sequelae and plan ways of intervention and prevention. In order to place the South African situation in a context she looks at some of the descriptions of the traditionally described stressors of childhood, and then considers the more extreme stresses. Finally, she presents some of the research and ideas that are being formulated about the South African situation.
This paper seeks to address the question of what is an appropriate psychology in South Africa and the Organisation for Appropriate Social Services in South Africa (OASSSA) contribution to it. Work within OASSSA takes a variety of forms: emergency services training, research, education, media and information, and therapeutic treatment.
This paper will seek to suggest that the operation of vigilante groups in South Africa's black areas since 1985 is an expression of the militarisation of South Africa, that the prevalence and operation of these groups should be seen as the internal equivalent of the strategy of destabilisation of neighbouring states.