Jana Hönke is ambitious in trying to examine everyday security practices around the sites of some multinational mining companies (MNC) in South Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as a way to examine hybrid transnational security governance.
The book is good at summarising the literature and theoretical debates over security governance and hybridity (Chapters 1–3). It also provides a sound summary of historical patterns in Southern Katanga, DRC and northwest Johannesburg, South Africa in the 1890s to 1920s (Chapter 6).
There is also an empirical chapter based on fieldwork, namely Chapter 4, which focuses on hybrid security practices after 1995 in both southern Katanga and northwest Johannesburg. In the book Hönke highlights where she believes she has broken new ground. For example, she shows that scholars like William Reno have oversimplified by claiming modern multinational mining companies in Africa replicate the colonial past in their behaviour and that we need to account for modernity.
The book's weakness is when it struggles to move beyond problematising. For example, Hönke writes that ‘actors involved in security governance are part of different – and often contradictory – discourses, fields and practice communities that shape how they make sense of the world and eventually also their security practices’ (p. 171). She also concludes that businesses' role in security governance is ‘substantial … but also more problematic – than the literature on governance assumes’ (p. 172).
The key insights of this book are hidden and not brought out clearly in the concluding chapter (7). Hönke's review of the rise of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and how security providers use this is important. I would have liked much more discussion of the rise of the Voluntary Principles (VPs) – a transnational code of conduct on security and human rights. Hönke believes that they have had ‘limited success’ (p. 78) and seems to regard them mostly as a fig leaf for international stake holder Public Relations but she does not consider how some multinational mining and oil companies have stayed away from the DRC, Equatorial Guinea and other countries with torrid human rights records because they could not effectively follow through on CSR commitments including the VPs.
It is clearly correct that in addition to ‘fortress protection and participatory engagement in the community belt [the immediate zone around a mine], managing political networks through clientele relationships and ‘corruption’ is a third strategy of maintaining the stability of operations’ (p. 79). Being politically networked is clearly important. But Hönke's analysis lacks the ability to differentiate – the culture of MNCs varies significantly and this also impacts on their security arrangements. What can companies do in such situations? Stay out? Or define a very narrow community belt footprint? There is also the question of the type of extraction – is oil different from diamonds or gold? The security arrangements and choices a multinational company makes is determined by such considerations.
One massive security challenge for many mineral mining companies in DRC, Tanzania and elsewhere is what to do with Artisanal and Small-scale Mining (ASM) pressures. The reputation risk posed by ASM convinced De Beers over a decade ago to shift its business model from Kimberlite to Supplier of Choice, for example.
Hönke is right to suggest we need more research on how Indian, Chinese or Brazilian companies might govern their security arrangements differently. In an age of joint ventures, we see tremendous variability and change of behaviour. As extraction becomes increasingly globalised there is no binary opposition between Western CSR Firms and greedy and irresponsible others. There is better practice, where mining-based communities are not abused and see the benefits of development through employment and investments. The major challenge for MNCs is to balance these needs with also providing share-holder value.
