Page 178 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo II

680 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

number of degrees awarded at Honours and master’s level. Today the South African Milita-
19
ry Academy has 300 students of which 70 are women. These students include all musterings
(the numbers exclude distance education or DE students).
Erasmus’s Afrikaner ideals and the association of the Academy with two Afrikaans-spea-
king universities in succession reversed societal sentiments with regard to the Defence Force
and the Military Academy. The Afrikaner had come to the party as Erasmus intended, but
the majority of English-speakers became estranged from these institutions as they viewed
both as Afrikaner bastions where they were unwelcome. Part of the estrangement of English
speakers was caused by the new leadership itself. With the rise of Afrikaner nationalism and
the ideology of (white) Christian Nationalism came exclusion. An “Afrikanerization” of state
and government was to take place which evolved into a modernised system of racial domina-
tion (some authors referred to Volkskapitalisme, some to a colonialism of a special type and
some to racial capitalism). Erasmus on assuming power attempted to purge the defence
20
force of high ranking officers that were perceived to be in favour or loyal to the previous
Smuts government who was defeated at the polls, many of these officers being English spe-
aking or liberal in their world-views. In the years to come the army saw a conscious policy
of “Afrikanerisation” with a large measure of success – somewhat less successful so was the
policy in the navy and the South African Air Force. 21
The Military Academy student body under the apartheid regime comprised of white, mo-
stly Afrikaans-speaking, males only for almost three decades; non-whites and women were
not allowed to enrol and English-speaking citizens in general stayed clear of it. A turning
point was reached in 1978 and 1979, when female students (three) and a so-called coloured
student were respectively admitted to the Military Academy for the first time. The admittance
of female students was, however, suspended the very next year due to lack of suitable ac-
commodation, whereas only seven students from the non-white communities (six so-called
coloureds and one Indian) enrolled at the Academy before 1990. amidst the internal libe-
22
ration struggle non-white South Africans were even less attracted to the apartheid military
than English-speaking whites. It was only in 1990/91, in anticipation of the coming of the
“New” South Africa that a concerted effort was made to make the student body more repre-
sentative of the South Africa population. Female students were consequently in 1991 read-
mitted to the Academy, whilst consciousness efforts were made to recruit more students from
the indian, black and brown communities and 1991 indeed saw the first ever black students

19 Mil. Acad. Archives, name list of Mil. Acad. graduates, 1965 – 1990; Militêre Akademie Annual 1984,
p.23.
20 Compare Dan O’Meara, Harold Wolpe, Martin Leggassick and Neville Alexander (See I. Liebenberg, Ideo-
logie in Konflik (Emmerentia, Taurus Uitgewers, 1990) and N. Alexander and M. Legassick in I. Liebenberg
et al, The Long March (Pretoria, Kagiso/HAUM, 1994), various chapters.
21 R. Williams.The other armies: Writing the history of MK In I. Liebenberg et al (eds.): The Long March: The
story of the struggle for liberation in South Africa (Kagiso/HAUM Publishers, Pretoria, 1994), p.22.
22 Mil. Acad. Archives, ‘Verslag van Projek WIMPOLE oor die Militêre Akademie”, 13 October 1989, pp.13
- 18, 40; Mil. Acad. Archives, ‘Projek WIMPOLE: Beslissingsvoorligting aan VBR’, 13 October 1989, pp.3
– 4, 9.