Page 175 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo II

677
aCta
The South African case allows for an interesting analysis of military forces professional,
volunteer and how these persons that joined the military forces were seen by the supportive
or antagonistic public, including student communities. For the purposes of the research here
the authors will refer to public attitudes in general, but more specifically to student attitudes
at Afrikaans speaking and English speaking universities. When Afrikaans speaking universi-
ties are concerned, especially the University of Stellenbosch which is historically associated
with Afrikaner Nationalist hegemony and the South African Military Academy at Saldanha,
will be referred to in more detail.
In this contribution the authors stride the period 1950 – 1990; an era of forty years in the
history of a country involved in “small wars” and one that at the same time experienced civil
strife. Three main issues are addressed in this paper: (1) tertiary education of officers under
apartheid, the chosen years being 1950 until 1990, (2) the way in which the civilian popula-
tion viewed the permanent forces at higher education institutions, with particular reference to
the student body of Stellenbosch University, and (3), the possible implications and outcomes
of past and present perceptions of the military for civil-military relations and the career of the
professional military person in contemporary South Africa. The authors depart from the re-
cognition that South Africa following the implementation of apartheid, which itself inherited
elements of colonialism, became a deeply divided society where ethnicity was imposed from
above by a white minority government and that such imposition led to increasing resistance
and social alienation inside the country. Wide-spread resistance to apartheid in turn led to
6
highly mobilised society and the militarization of the South African state. 7
tertiary education of officers, 1950 to 1990

Junior officer development in South Africa took a giant leap when the first post-Second
World War Permanent Force cadet course kicked off on 1 April 1947. Inspired by the comple-
xities of the nuclear age and the programmes of Sandhurst and West Point, the cadet course
curriculum at the South African Military College in Pretoria in its pioneering stage included
a number of academic subjects in addition to the customary military subjects. Defence He-
adquarters (DHQ) envisaged the combination of military training and elementary acade-
mic education that would inculcate values and attitudes most desirable for officers, school
prospective officers thoroughly in the art of command and personnel management, imbue
them with interest in the military profession and the study thereof and enhance their insight
and comprehension in both the military, historical and academic spheres. Following the
8
National Party’s electoral victory of 1948, the new Defence Minister, F.C. Erasmus took the
academic education of Permanent Force cadet’s one step further by introducing military de-
gree studies. His aim, and that of DHQ, was not only to empower future officers to deal with
the technological, administrative and socio-political complexities of modern warfare and
to bring them on par with their peers in leading defence forces abroad, but also to put UDF

6 A. Zegeye, I. Liebenberg and G. Houston. Resisting Ethnicity from Above: Social Identities and Democracy
in South Africa (HSRC Publishers, Pretoria, 2000), p. 5ff.
7 K.W. Grundy, The Militarization of South African Politics. (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988),
p.58ff.
8 R.J. Haines: The Training of Candidate Officers in South Africa. Militaria, vol. 8, no. 3, 1978, pp.5 - 6.