A fragile hegemon, a fragile hegemonic discourse: a critical engagement with the hydropolitical complex and implications of South Africa's hydropolitical environment for Southern Africa

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Title:	A fragile hegemon, a fragile hegemonic discourse: a critical engagement with the hydropolitical complex and implications of South Africa's hydropolitical environment for Southern Africa
Author:	Jacobs, Inga
Year:	2010
Periodical:	African security (ISSN 1939-2206)
Volume:	3
Issue:	1
Pages:	21-45
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	Africa South Africa
Subjects:	geopolitics international cooperation water resources
External link:	https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19362201003608789
Abstract:	As a result of the water security dilemma in southern Africa and the relative scarcity of the resource in the region, several scholars have referred to southern Africa as a hydropolitical complex. Using a constructivist ontology, this paper attempts to illustrate the hydropolitical complex's strengths and weaknesses in both helping and hindering an understanding of transboundary water resources by emphasizing that while State-centric and/or system level analyses may lend themselves to basin-wide cooperative strategies due to the manner in which water is prioritized as a strategic resource within a river basin and beyond a basin, it displays a limited utility in explaining subnational configurations. Using South Africa as a case study, and thereby opening up the black box of the region's most powerful State, the hydropolitical complex unveils its numerous weaknesses. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]