New Book Considers Forgotten Black Soldiers In South Africa’s Wars

Members of the South African National Defense Force (SANDF) take up a position next to a shack in the black Umlazi township outside Durban, South Africa, as supporters of the African National Congress and the Inkatha Freedom Party clashed outside a stadium where President Nelson Mandela addressed a May Day rally, 01 May 1995. A new book looks at the legacy of Black African soldiers who fought in South African forces from the 1970s into the early 1990s. WALTER DHLADHLA/AFP via Getty Images)

The Cold War in Southern Africa produced some odd bed fellows. At one point during the Angolan Civil some 2,000 Cuban soldiers were assigned to defend the operations of an American oil company. The irony of Communist internationalists defending an American oil company whose revenues were providing for the majority of the funds for Angola’s communist government may have been lost at the time. 

“Apartheid’s Black Soldiers Un-national Wars and Militaries in Southern Africa” by Lennart Bolliger published by Ohio University Press provides more such intriguing examples that have until now slipped through the pages other history books. The book looks at Namibians who fought against the Socialist SWAPO and mostly Angolan soldiers who fought with the South African Army. The latter became a Portuguese-speaking elite unit of the South African Defence Forces.  SWAPO would win securing Nambia’s independence and Aparthied would crumble in South Africa. That these men were on the wrong side of history doesn’t detract from the human elements of their stories.