Review of Lennart Bolliger's Apartheid's Black Soldiers (original) (raw)

Bad Guys: Personal Accounts of Military Service in the South African Defence Force 1969 to 1990

2021

BAD GUYS Personal Accounts of Military Service in the South African Defence Force 1969 to 1990 Most people today, when presented with the more recently accepted picture of the Apartheid regime that ruled in South Africa until the mid-1990s, can be excused for believing that all personnel who served in the Armed Forces of the South African Defence Force during that time were “Bad Guys”, who personally suppressed the black population. With new and representative governments in power in both Namibia and South Africa today, not much evidence is likely to be produced to counter such an opinion. In this, and other books, we hope to present a human face of those involved in the SADF, most of whom were not remotely evil, and were just trying to make the best they could of a difficult and uncomfortable situation, without considering themselves to have been holding up the Apartheid regime. The 18 personal accounts in this book are by men who served part of their service in South-West Africa, during the border war. These are the thoughts, feelings and experiences of the men who were there. This is part of a series of books of personal accounts of South African Servicemen from 1966 – 1998. The more established books in the series are `Pro Patria’ originally published in 1995, and `Grensvegter?: South African Army Psychologist’ published in 1996 – both republished via Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing in 2021. The originals of `Pro Patria’ and `Grensvegter?’ have been cited in several articles by Gary Baines, Professor of History at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa.