Army Deserters in Exile

Bibliographic Data

ID5609985
AuthorsG Maringira (0000-0001-8071-641X, Sol Plaatje University, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume76
Issue4
Pages851-860
Publication date2025-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueBritish Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0007-1315 • E-ISSN: 1468-4446
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1468-4446.13222
PMID40325899
OpenAlexW4410133069
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited35

Desertion from the military does not turn soldiers into civilians. In this paper, I analyse military identity and embodied practices of soldiers who deserted from the Zimbabwe National Army and were exiled in South Africa. Soldiering is understood as an essence part of who they are, as men who risked their lives and invested in a career, which they later deserted. These soldiers had a particular sense of a military past which functioned at the discursive level: even though they blamed the military for making them leave the barracks, they thought of themselves as soldiers in a context of exile. The men whose narratives are presented in this paper joined the army in post-independence Zimbabwe, and they did not participate in the country's liberation war against the British. These men have a different understanding of themselves as soldiers to those who fought in the liberation war. Their sense of themselves, and others in and outside the military is fundamentally drawn from a professional army. As is often noted, the military is greedy in terms of its demands on its members, and consequently it embeds within military personnel lasting practices, ways of being and a sense of a military identity, all of which can be resistant to change, yet simultaneously resilient, even in a context of exile. I therefore suggest that the experience of civilian life alone does little to erode the practices and mind frames of the military ingrained into army deserters even outside the army. This seems to be the case in a number of African societies where military desertion is prevalent, especially in authoritarian regimes

Aesthetics · Context (archaeology · Criminology · Identity (music · Independence (probability theory · Military history · Military operations other than war · Military personnel · Military science · Military service · Military sociology · Military theory · Narrative · Political science · Revolution in Military Affairs · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · African history and culture studies · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Gender Studies · History · Law · South African History and Culture

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