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Erschienen in:
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2020 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

1. Historical Overview: Transition and Transformation

verfasst von : Lindy Heinecken

Erschienen in: South Africa's Post-Apartheid Military

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

South Africa’s Post-Apartheid Military: Lost in Transition and Transformation focuses on the processes of defence transformation within the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) since the new democratic dispensation in 1994. The book has three objectives. The first is to examine how the SANDF adapted to the new security environment in terms of its shift in mission focus. The second is to evaluate the effect the changed ‘political environment’ has had on civil-military relations. The third is to look at how the military has adapted to the new social and legal environment in terms of its human resource policies and practices. This chapter provides some historical context and describes the scope of the book, before addressing the first theme in Chap. 2, namely how the SANDF has adapted its organisational structure to meet changing mission requirements.

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Fußnoten
1
Annette Seegers, The Military in the Making of Modern South Africa (London/New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 1996), 210–216.
 
2
Philippe Manigart, ‘Restructuring the Armed Forces’, in Handbook of the Sociology of the Military, eds. Giuseppe Caforio and Marina Nuciari (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2018), 406–407.
 
3
David Chuter, Defence Transformation: A Short Guide to the Issues, ISS Monograph series, no. 49, 1 August 2000, 1–2, https://​issafrica.​org/​research/​monographs/​monograph-49-defence-transformation-a-short-guide-to-the-issues-by-david-chuter, accessed 6 August 2019.
 
4
Ibid.
 
5
Ibid., 1.
 
6
W.A. Dorning, ‘A Concise History of the South African Defence Force (1912–1987)’, Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies 17, no. 2 (1987): 1–23.
 
7
David Welsh, The Rise and Fall of Apartheid (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2010), 36–38.
 
8
Albert Grundlingh, ‘The King’s Afrikaners? Enlistment and Ethnic Identity in the Union of South Africa’s Defence Force During the Second World War, 1939–45’, The Journal of African History 40, no. 3 (1999): 395–410.
 
9
Seegers, The Military in the Making of Modern South Africa, 38 and 68.
 
10
Rene Geyer, ‘The Union Defence Force and the 1914 Strike: The Dynamics of the Shadow of the Burgher’, Historia 59, no. 2 (2014): 136–151.
 
11
Ibid.; Marian Lacey, ‘Platskiet Politiek: The Role of the Union Defence Force (UDF) 1910–1924’, in War and Society: The Militarisation of South Africa, eds. Jacklyn Cock and Laurie Nathan, 28–50 (Cape Town: David Philip Publishers, 1989).
 
12
Sandra Swart, ‘A Boer and His Gun and His Wife Are Three Things Always Together: Republican Masculinity and the 1914 Rebellion’, Journal of Southern African Studies 24, no. 4 (1998): 737–751.
 
13
In 1921 the Union Defence Forces was renamed the Union Defence Force.
 
14
Ian van der Waag, ‘The Union Defence Force between the Two World Wars, 1919–1940’, Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies 30, no. 2 (2000): 193–219.
 
15
Lacey, ‘Platskiet Politiek’, 28–50.
 
16
Platskiet-politiek was frequently used by General Smuts and was severely criticised by General Hertzog, leader of the opposition National Party, as defending pro-imperialist policies (Lacey, ‘Platskiet Politiek’, 35).
 
17
Andries Fokkens, ‘The Role and Application of the Union Defence Force in the Suppression of Internal Unrest’ (MMil thesis, Department of Military Science, Stellenbosch University, 2006).
 
18
Lacey, ‘Platskiet Politiek’, 39.
 
19
Stephen Ellis, ‘The Historical Significance of South Africa’s Third Force’, Journal of Southern African Studies 24, no. 2 (1998): 261–299.
 
20
Ibid.; Andre Wessels, ‘The First Two Years of War: The Development of the Union Defence Forces (UDF) September 1939 to September 1951’, Military History Journal 11, no. 5 (2000), http://​samilitaryhistor​y.​org/​vol115aw.​html, accessed 6 August 2019.
 
21
Ian van der Waag, A Military History of Modern South Africa (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2015).
 
22
Ibid., 195–214.
 
23
This stemmed from the increase in the number of blacks moving to the urban areas and, ultimately, the threat this was perceived to pose to white employment in the face of black competition.
 
24
Roger Boulter, ‘Afrikaner Nationalism in Action: F.C. Erasmus and South Africa’s Defence Forces, 1948–1959’, Nations and Nationalism 6, no. 3 (2000): 437–459.
 
25
Seegers, The Military in the Making of Modern South Africa, 96.
 
26
McGill Alexander, ‘The Militarisation of South African White Society, 1948–1990’, Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies 30, no. 2 (2000): 271–272.
 
27
C. James Jacobs, ‘The Forward Defence Strategy of the South African Defence Force (SADF) 1978–1989’, Journal for Contemporary History 31, no. 1 (2006): 26.
 
28
Rocky Williams, ‘The Other Two Armies: A Brief Historical Overview of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), 1961–1994’, Military History Journal 11, no. 5 (2000).
 
29
Portuguese name: Resistência Nacional Moçambicana.
 
30
Seegers, The Military in the Making of Modern South Africa, 210–216; Deon Fourie, ‘New South Africa and the Armed Forces’, in South Africa: Designing New Political Institutions, eds. Murray Faure and Jan-Erik Lane (London: Sage Publishing, 1996), 160.
 
31
The PAC was formed in 1959, following a breakaway by the ‘Africanist’ faction of the ANC in 1958 over dissatisfaction with the ANC’s tradition of racial inclusivity (see Welsh, The Rise and Fall of Apartheid, 36–38).
 
32
Bill Sass, ‘The Union and South African Defence Force: 1912 to 1994’, in About Turn: The Transformation of the South African Military and Intelligence, eds. Jakkie Cilliers and Markus Reichardt (Halfway House: Institute for Defence Policy, 1996), 124; Pallo Jordan and Mac Maharaj, ‘South Africa and the Turn to Armed Resistance’, South African Historical Journal 70, no. 1 (2018): 22.
 
33
Welsh, The Rise and Fall of Apartheid, 79.
 
34
Nigel Worden, The Making of Modern South Africa: Conquest, Segregation and Apartheid (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 114.
 
35
Republic of South Africa, Defence and Armaments Production: Period 1960 to 1970 (Pretoria: Department of Defence, 1971), 26.
 
36
Republic of South Africa, White Paper on Defence (Pretoria: Department of Defence, 1973), 3.
 
37
Jacobs, ‘The Forward Defence Strategy’, 31.
 
38
The Portuguese name is União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola.
 
39
Williams, ‘The Other Two Armies’, 7–8.
 
40
Jacobs, ‘The Forward Defence Strategy’, 35.
 
41
Jannie Geldenhuys, At the Front: A General’s Account of South Africa’s Border War (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2009), 239–255.
 
42
Leopold Scholtz, Ratels on the Lomba: The Story of Charlie Squadron (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2017).
 
43
See, for example, the debates in Geldenhuys, 2009; Greg Mills and David Williams, 7 Battles that Shaped South Africa (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2006); Leopold Scholtz, ‘The South African Strategic and Operational Objectives in Angola, 1987–88’, Scientia Militaria: The South African Journal of Military Studies 38, no. 1 (2010): 68–98; Scholtz, 2017; Thula Simpson, Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle (Johannesburg: Penguin, 2016); and Andreas Velthuizen, ‘The Significance of the Battle for Cuito Cuanavale: Long-term Foresight of the Current Strategic Landscape’, Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies 37, no. 2 (2009): 107–123.
 
44
Chester A. Crocker, Herding Cats: Multiparty Mediation in a Complex World (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1999), 214–242.
 
45
Worden, The Making of Modern South Africa, 100.
 
46
For a detailed account of MK’s activities, from the emergence of the struggle to the eventual homecoming and transition to democracy, see Simpson, Umkhonto we Sizwe.
 
47
Williams, ‘The Other Two Armies’, 6.
 
48
Dale T. McKinley, ‘Umkhonto we Sizwe:​ A Critical Analysis of the Armed Struggle of the African National Congress’, South African Historical Journal 70, no. 1 (2018): 39.
 
49
Robert Davies and Dan O’Meara, ‘Total Strategy in Southern Africa: An Analysis of South African Regional Policy since 1978’, Journal of Southern African Studies 11, no. 2 (1987): 183–211.
 
50
Graeme Callister, “Patriotic Duty or Resented Imposition? Public Reactions to Military Conscription in White South Africa, 1952–1972”, Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies 35, no. 1 (2007): 51.
 
51
Sass, ‘The Union and South African Defence Force’, 126.
 
52
Greg Mills and Geoffrey Wood, ‘Ethnicity, Integration and the South African Armed Forces’, South African Defence Review, no. 12 (1993): 22–36.
 
53
Sass, ‘The Union and South African Defence Force’, 123.
 
54
All four homelands experienced military coups of varying success, with corruption within the homeland administrations cited as a motivating factor, as well as political cleavages.
 
55
Padraig O’Malley, The Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Vol. 2, Chapter Five, ‘The Homelands from 1960 to 1990’, O’Malley Archives. https://​omalley.​nelsonmandela.​org/​omalley/​index.​php/​site/​q/​.​.​.​/​08lv02377.​htm. Accessed 20 February 2019.
 
56
Philip Frankel, Marching to the Millennium: The Birth, Development and Transformation of the South African National Defence Force (Pretoria: South African Department of Defence Communications, 1998), 59.
 
57
At the time of the Bisho Massacre in 1992, Brigadier Marius Oelschig, a former SADF military intelligence officer, was seconded to the CDF. He was alleged to have been instructed to use all means to crush the ANC demonstration against military rule in the homeland. The SADF lent support to the CDF to halt an ANC march to campaign for political support in the Ciskei. This resulted in the deaths of 28 people and injuries to more than 200 protestors (see O’Malley, The Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, ‘Regional Profile Eastern Cape, the Bisho Massacre’, n.d.).
 
58
Sasha Gear, Now that the War is Over. Ex-Combatants’ Transition and the Question of Violence: A Literature Review, Violence and Transition series (Johannesburg: Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, 2002).
 
59
Davies and O’Meara, ‘Total Strategy in Southern Africa’, 183–211.
 
60
James Selfe, ‘The State Security Apparatus: Implications for Covert Operations’, in The Hidden Hand: Covert Operations in South Africa, eds. Anthony de V. Minnaar, Ian Liebenberg and Charl D. Schutte (Pretoria: HSRC Press, 1994), 103–112.
 
61
Sass, ‘The Union and South African Defence Force’, 129.
 
62
Philip Frankel, Pretoria’s Praetorians: Civil-military relations in South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 161.
 
63
Abel Esterhuyse, ‘Comparing Apples with Pears: The Pre-1994 and Post-1994 South African Military Cultures’, Journal for Contemporary History 37, no. 2 (2012): 228.
 
64
Welsh, The Rise and Fall of Apartheid, 249.
 
65
Ellis, ‘The Historical Significance of South Africa’s Third Force’, 263.
 
66
Operation Vula ‘was established as an insurance policy, lest negotiations failed, and was intended to put high-ranking MK operatives into South Africa to move guerrilla war towards a ‘people’s war’ in which the forces on the ground were coordinated and aligned with the other strands of ANC strategy’ (see Welsh, The Rise and Fall of Apartheid, 276).
 
67
The Inkatha National Cultural Liberation Movement, generally referred to as Inkatha, was founded on 21 March 1975 at KwaNzimela, in northern KwaZulu. Inkatha emerged, along with the Black Consciousness Movement, to fill the vacuum in black politics caused by the banning of ANC and PAC. It was the precursor to the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), formed in 1994.
 
68
The ‘Third Force’ was a term used by leaders of the ANC during the late 1980s and early 1990s to refer to a clandestine force believed to be responsible for a surge in violence in KwaZulu-Natal and townships around and south of the Witwatersrand (or Rand). For a detailed discussion, see Ellis, ‘The Historical Significance of South Africa’s Third Force’, 261–299.
 
69
Ellis, “Historical significance of SA’s Third Force”, 261.
 
70
Welsh, The Rise and Fall of Apartheid, 472–473.
 
71
Max Du Preez, Of Warriors, Lovers and Prophets: Unusual Stories from South Africa’s Past (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2016), 229.
 
72
According to Houston, Plaatjie and April (2015) ‘APLA members had quite a diverse military training. During the 1970s and early 1980s, APLA cadres underwent training in Libya, Ghana, Guinea, Uganda, Nigeria, Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Yugoslavia, China and Kampuchea (present-day Cambodia). Libya specialised in providing basic training in infantry, while Guinea provided basic infantry training as well as specialisation in anti-aircraft measures and counterintelligence. Uganda provided basic infantry training, mines training and a commander’s course, while Nigeria provided an officer’s course and air force training. The remaining countries in the list above provided courses in infantry, guerrilla warfare, commando training, intelligence and security and other specialities. See Gregory Houston, Thami ka Plaatjie and Thozama April, ‘Military Training and Camps of the Pan Africanist Congress of South Africa, 1961–1981’, Historia 60, no. 1 (2015): 24–50.
 
73
Mark Shaw, ‘Biting the Bullet: Negotiating Democracy’s Defence’, in South African Review 7. The Small Miracle: South Africa’s Negotiated Settlement, eds. Steven Friedman and Doreen Atkinson (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1994), 232.
 
74
Seegers, The Military in the Making of Modern South Africa, 277; Frankel, Marching to the Millennium, 63.
 
75
Frankel, Marching to the Millennium, 63.
 
76
Amy Truesdell, ‘Achieving Political Objectives: South African Defense Priorities from the Apartheid to the Post-Apartheid Era’, African Studies Review 52, no. 3 (2009): 107–125.
 
77
Shaw, ‘Biting the Bullet’, 228.
 
78
Welsh, The Rise and Fall of Apartheid, 248.
 
79
Anita Gossmann, ‘Lost In Transition: The South African Military and Counterinsurgency’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 19, no. 4 (2008): 547–547.
 
80
Frankel, Marching to the Millennium, 8.
 
81
Shaw, ‘Biting the Bullet’, 246–247.
 
82
Ibid., 247.
 
83
Seegers, The Military in the Making of Modern South Africa, 269.
 
Metadaten
Titel
Historical Overview: Transition and Transformation
verfasst von
Lindy Heinecken
Copyright-Jahr
2020
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33734-6_1