Page 173 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo II

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Afrikaner Nationalism, Tertiary Military Education
and Civil Discontent: Student attitudes at an Afrikaans
University from Apartheid’s beginnings to the end
of the Angolan War, 1950- 1989

IAN LIEBENBErG AND DEoN vISSEr 1

introduction
Over two centuries South Africa saw several conflicts within and outside its geographi-
cal space. Following internal wars of conquest and resistance (1700s to 1880s), the country
experienced the Anglo-Boer War that deeply affected South Africans of all races and classes.
South Africans under the Union of South Africa participated in two world wars and the war
in Korea. Under apartheid rule many white South Africans and some coloured and black
soldiers, the latter mainly belonging to “ethnic” battalions/units, fought an extensive war in
Namibia and Angola (1966 to 1989) in what the South African regime perceived as a war
against Communist forces poised to destroy the country.
Since the late 1800s several internal disturbances took place inside South Africa. Sup-
pressing such internal disturbances led to military involvement under government instruction
against its own people. Examples are the Bambata Rebellion in 1906 , the 1913 and 1922
2
mineworker strikes, the 1914/15 Afrikaner Rebellion and the post-September 1984 deploy-
ment of the South African Defence Force (SADF) inside the country against resistors to apar-
theid. Outside South Africa the military also saw deployment: Between 1914 and 1989 the
South African military was involved in operations against the Germans in South West Africa
(First World War), the Bondelswarts people in South West Africa (1921), Eastern Africa (first
against German forces in World War One and then against Italian Forces in World War Two),
Northern Africa and Italy, against German and Italian forces (World War Two), Korea in a
US led war on “communist forces”, and during apartheid rule in Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe),
Zambia, Swaziland, Lesotho, Mozambique, Botswana, Namibia and Angola on different sca-
les and at different times. During two hundred and a score more years, South African terri-
tories saw black resistance against Dutch and British colonialists, clashes between the Boer
Republics and indigenous groups, the defeat of independent Boer Republics by the ravenous
British Empire, fought as an extension of the British Empire against Nazi Fascism and racism
together with the Soviet Union. During a time of a transition from an extension of the United
Kingdom to a militarized apartheid state internal divisions remained deep and influenced
each and every South African in various ways. In white society it produced a rift between

1 J.C.R. (Ian) Liebenberg is a senior researcher at the Centre for Military Studies (CEMIS), Faculty of Military
Science, Stellenbosch University (South African Military Academy). Lieutenant Colonel GE (Deon) Visser
is an associate professor of Military History at the Faculty of Military Science, Stellenbosch University
(South African Military Academy).
2 J. Pampallis, Foundations of the New South Africa (Maskew Miller Longman, Cape Town,1991), pp.49,
64.