Apartheid’s Black Soldiers: Un-national Wars and Militaries in Southern Africa (War and Militarism in African History)

New oral histories from Black Namibian and Angolan troops who fought in apartheid South Africa’s security forces reveal their involvement, and its impact on their lives, to be far more complicated than most historical scholarship has acknowledged. In anticolonial struggles across the African continent, tens of thousands of African soldiers served in the militaries of colonial and settler states. In southern Africa, they often made up the bulk of these militaries and, in some contexts, far outnumbered those who fought in the liberation movements’ armed wings. Despite these soldiers' significant impact on the region’s military and political history, this dimension of southern Africa’s anticolonial struggles has been almost entirely ignored in previous scholarship. Black troops from Namibia and Angola spearheaded apartheid South Africa’s military intervention in their countries’ respective anticolonial war and postindependence civil war. Drawing from oral history interviews and archival sources, Lennart Bolliger challenges the common framing of these wars as struggles of national liberation fought by and for Africans against White colonial and settler-state armies. Focusing on three case studies of predominantly Black units commanded by White officers, Bolliger investigates how and why these soldiers participated in South Africa’s security forces and considers the legacies of that involvement. In tackling these questions, he rejects the common tendency to categorize the soldiers as “collaborators” and “traitors” and reveals the un-national facets of anticolonial struggles. Finally, the book’s unique analysis of apartheid military culture shows how South Africa’s military units were far from monolithic and instead developed distinctive institutional practices, mythologies, and concepts of militarized masculinity. Introduction. Un-National Soldiers in Southern Africa During and After Decolonization -- "The Ovambos Did Not Take Part in the War against the Germans": A Brief History of Fractures and Divisions in Colonial Namibia and Southern Angola, late 1880s to 1990 -- "We Live Between Two Fires": The Reasons for Joining the Apartheid Security Forces in Northern Namibia, 1975-1989 -- "The War Was Very Complicated": The Formation and Development of 32 Battalion, 1975-1984 -- "Every Force Has Its Own Rules": The Military Cultures of South Africa's Security Forces in Namibia and Angola -- "Dictation Comes from the Victor": The Postwar Politics of Black Former Soldiers in Namibia, 1989-2014 -- "We Are Lost People": Citizenship and Belonging of Black Former Soldiers in South Africa, 1989 to the Present "Thousands of Black African troops supported South Africa's military in Namibia and Angola during apartheid. Bolliger's new interviews and research lead him to reject their assumed role as collaborators, to challenge the portrayal of their wars as struggles for national liberation, and to reveal the complexity of South African military culture"-- Provided by publisher Thousands of Black troops served in South Africa's security forces in Namibia and Angola during apartheid. Bolliger's new research leads him to reject their common depiction as "collaborators," challenge the portrayal of the wars in which they fought as struggles for national liberation, and reveal the complexity of South Africa's military culture.