Apartheid's Black Soldiers

Un-national Wars and Militaries in Southern Africa

Lennart Bolliger

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780821447413
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: 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.

1

“The Ovambos Did Not Take Part in the War against the Germans”

Fractures and Divisions in Colonial Namibia and Southern Angola

IN THIS CHAPTER, I PRESENT A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF COLONIAL rule in South West Africa (later Namibia) and southern Angola from the late 1880s until 1990, focusing on different groups’ involvement and association with colonial armies. In addition, I introduce and trace the early history of the military units that are at the heart of this book. I argue that the examination of various divisions along social, political, and regional lines is essential to understanding the later recruitment of Black soldiers into apartheid South Africa’s security forces from the mid-1970s onward. In other words, there is a longer social history that predates and illuminates the recruitment and military service of these soldiers.¹

There are two central aspects to the social history presented here. First, the recruitment of soldiers during the period of South African occupation was preceded by a long history of African troops who, for diverse reasons, fought in and alongside colonial militaries in today’s Namibia and southern Angola. This was not unique to these regions but was a widespread phenomenon at the outset of colonialism. The German colonial army in East Africa first recruited troops mainly from Egyptian Sudan and later from different regions in German East Africa and Belgian Congo. In the case of the Congo Free State, the Force Publique comprised locally raised soldiers and auxiliaries as well as troops from various countries in East and West Africa.²

Second, the periods of both German and South African colonial rule in Namibia were characterized by various fractures between and within different political groups, by regional differences in the experience of colonial occupation, and by competing political aspirations. In other words, people’s encounters with colonialism and later their support for nationalist organizations varied significantly across the territory as alliances shifted and new social divisions opened up during decades of conflict.³ These divisions, including within the Namibian nationalist movement, have continued to play a crucial role in debates around history, citizenship, and belonging in postapartheid Namibia (see chapter 5).

GERMAN COLONIAL RULE, 1884–1915

The German colonial encroachment on South West Africa relied heavily on local allies and recruits and was marked by shifting divisions, fractures, and alliances. Like during the subsequent struggle against South African occupation, people were often confronted with a multiplicity of overlapping and conflicting pressures. South West Africa was declared a German colony at the Berlin Conference in 1884, and a first contingent of German troops arrived in the country four years later. Germany made no attempt to occupy the north of the territory because it considered the Owambo polities, which straddled southern Angola and northern South West Africa, too populous, well armed, and well organized to be defeated easily.⁴ North of the so-called Red Line, the colonial administration relied on “protection” treaties with local leaders that ensured the flow of migrant laborers to the mines in the south of the territory.⁵ In southern and central South West Africa, termed the “Police Zone,” Germany established and consolidated colonial rule through military force as well as the strategic exploitation of existing sociopolitical tensions.⁶

In 1890, for instance, German colonial authorities directly intervened in the succession struggle for the Ovaherero paramount chieftaincy after the death of Chief Maharero kaTjamuaha. His son, Samuel Maharero, successfully appealed to colonial authorities to back his claim to succession. From 1892 onward, troops of Maharero joined the German colonial army, the Schutztruppe, in the violent suppression of armed resistance against German colonization by various groups, such as Khauas, Ovambanderu, Swartbooi, as well as eastern Ovaherero, whose resistance Maharero perceived as a direct challenge to his own authority.⁷ Like other rulers in South West Africa and other African colonial contexts, Maharero recognized that the alliance with the colonial authorities could further his own political objectives. The German colonial military also directly employed substantial numbers of Ovaherero men in both combatant and noncombatant positions. In fact, Ovaherero were involved and associated with the Schutztruppe ever since its arrival.⁸

In 1895, Maharero accompanied the German colonial military to delineate and enforce the northern frontier of so-called Hereroland. According to historian Jan-Bart Gewald, German authorities were “anxious to prevent contact, and thus the development of an alliance between the Herero chieftains of Hereroland and the Ovambo kingdoms that lay to their north.”⁹ As for Maharero, his cooperation in the enforcement of such new boundaries not only earned him a salary from the German colonial administration but enabled him to establish his authority over political and economic rivals.¹⁰

From 1895 onward, German military campaigns also employed the troops of Chief Hendrik Witbooi from southern South West Africa. In the 1880s, Witbooi had become a leading Nama chief and military figure through cattle raids on other Nama clans and Ovaherero settlements. In August 1894, he was forced to sign a protection treaty with Germany. Such locally recruited troops formed a significant part of the early German military campaigns in South West Africa and, like their later counterparts during South African occupation, provided both military manpower and vital local knowledge.¹¹

In January 1904, rising conflict and tension caused by the expansion of German settler colonialism erupted in what has been called the German-Herero War, or the more inclusive but anachronistic German-Namibian War.¹² German soldiers and settlers responded to armed attacks and insurrection by African forces by committing the first genocide of the twentieth century. In August 1904 Ovaherero forces under Maharero suffered a decisive defeat at Ohamakari (Waterberg), and the survivors who fled into the Omaheke desert were pursued by German troops. Unlike the vast majority of the Ovaherero, Maharero and some of his followers reached safety in the Bechuanaland Protectorate (today’s Botswana), where their descendants have continued to live since.¹³

In early October 1904, General Lothar von Trotha of the German colonial military issued a proclamation, which has become known as the “extermination order” (Vernichtungsbefehl in German). Following von Trotha’s proclamation, German forces violently pursued the Ovaherero, the Nama, and other groups in central and southern South West Africa, killing tens of thousands of men, women, and children. Those who survived the onslaught but were unable to flee South West Africa were placed into concentration camps and forced to work on various military and civilian projects across the country.¹⁴ By the end of the genocide in 1908, German soldiers and settlers had killed an estimated 75–80 percent of the Ovaherero population, 35–50 percent of the Nama population, and an unknown number of people from other groups.¹⁵ Those who had survived the genocide “were left propertyless, landless, and leaderless.”¹⁶

Divisions and alliances often shifted during the war—as they would during the later war against South African occupation. After initially having fought on the German side, the troops of Hendrik Witbooi turned against the Schutztruppe in October 1904. Some Damara groups fought on the Ovaherero side while others sided with the Germans, sought to remain “neutral,” or fled from the fighting. Again, people’s motives for siding with the German colonial forces were varied and rarely straightforward. Among the Ovaherero, for instance, some prisoners of war were forcibly recruited and sent out to convince others to hand themselves in. After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, some Ovaherero soldiers briefly fought alongside German troops against invading South African forces.¹⁷

SOUTH AFRICAN COLONIAL RULE, 1915–45

After the Schutztruppe’s defeat and the end of German colonial rule in July 1915, South African forces occupied the territory on behalf of Britain. From the beginning, South Africa enforced and consolidated its rule in South West Africa through violence and alliances with local rulers and soldiers. During the fighting in 1914–15, various groups of Black soldiers in South West Africa and southern Angola sided with different colonial forces. These groups, however, were not motivated by a sense of colonial loyalty but rather by more local and immediate concerns.

In the Kavango region in northern South West Africa, Hompa Kandjimi Hawanga and his troops successfully assisted the Germans in the fighting against approaching Portuguese colonial forces and obtained full possession of their land after the German withdrawal. At the same time, Vita Tom, a warlord also known as Kaptein Oorlog (Afrikaans for “Captain War”), and his followers attacked German colonial forces alongside the Portuguese, under whose rule they had previously engaged in plunder, cattle raids, and battles against the Owambo kingdoms in southern Angola. Vita Tom’s followers also included Ovaherero refugees who had fled to the Owambo region during the genocide.¹⁸ South Africa’s forces in turn included Ovaherero soldiers, who had been dispatched by Maharero but fought under South African command in hopes of regaining control of their land.¹⁹ In short, these actors formed strategic alliances with colonial forces in pursuit of their own specific objectives.

After assuming control in 1915, South Africa began to rule South West Africa under martial law, enforced by the Union Defence Force (UDF), and turned toward northern South West Africa, which had not experienced direct colonial occupation by Germany. The UDF “was to complete the task of colonization begun by the Germans” by bringing the north under South African indirect rule.²⁰ The largest Owambo kingdom in the north at the time was the Kwanyama kingdom, divided between South West Africa and Portuguese-occupied Angola and led by King Mandume ya Ndemufayo.²¹

When a devastating famine ravaged the Owambo region in 1915, Portuguese colonial forces seized the opportunity to attack and defeat Mandume’s forces, forcing the king to move his capital south into South West Africa.²² South Africa, whose forces had simultaneously occupied the southern Owambo region, granted Mandume “protection.” When Mandume increasingly defied the terms of protection, the South Africa regime began preparations to depose him, relying on information provided by local allies. In February 1917, Mandume, the last Kwanyama king, was killed in battle by the South African colonial forces sent to remove him.²³

The following two decades saw the first emerging ideas of nationalism, a growing crisis of legitimacy for traditional authorities connected to the colonial state, and severe political repression. In January 1921, South Africa began to govern South West Africa on the new legal basis of a League of Nations mandate. The South African regime systematically continued to extend the previous land expropriations under German colonial rule, introduced forced labor practices, instituted pass laws, and established “native reserves” for Africans as parts of its policies of racial segregation. In the 1920s and 1930s, both armed and unarmed resistance to South Africa’s policies were met with violent suppression by the UDF, as in the rebellions by the Bondelswart community in 1922, the Rehoboth community in 1925, and Chief Iipumbu ya Tshilongo in the Owambo region in 1932.²⁴

At the same time, particularly in the Owambo and Kavango regions,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Un-national Soldiers in Southern Africa during and after Decolonization
• 1. “The Ovambos Did Not Take Part in the War against the Germans”: Fractures and Divisions in Colonial Namibia and Southern Angola
• 2. “We Live between Two Fires”: The Reasons for Joining the Apartheid Security Forces in Northern Namibia, 1975–89
• 3. “The War Was Very Complicated”: The Formation and Development of 32 Battalion, 1975–84
• 4. “Every Force Has Its Own Rules”: The Military Cultures of South Africa’s Security Forces in Namibia and Angola
• 5. “Dictation Comes from the Victor”: The Postwar Politics of Black Former Soldiers in Namibia, 1989–2014
• 6. “We Are Lost People”: Citizenship and Belonging of Black Former Soldiers in South Africa, 1989 to the Present
• Conclusion: Un-national Wars of Decolonization and Their Legacies
• Notes
• Note on Interviews Conducted by the Author
• Bibliography
• Index