Military Masculinities and Political Violence in Africa

In this chapter I examine the ways in which soldiers are trained and how they carry a sense of doing political violence in a context in which the military is deeply embedded and embodied in politics. Soldiers who do violence carry with them a liberation mentality which is masculine in both theory and practice. The liberation struggle was about viewing the other as an enemy of the state, and this continues in the present politics of Zimbabwe, with the military leading such views and enacting through political violence. The chapter asserts that the ‘making’ of soldiers is political and a deliberate attempt to enskill soldiers to do violence against imagined enemies and civilians alike. The military is a violent and masculine institution in which soldiers are legitimately trained to serve the state.