A01=Neil Roos
anti-fascist movements
apartheid resistance
Artillery Unit
Author_Neil Roos
Category=NH
colonial society dynamics
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Fighting Talk
Joint Undertaking
Mersa Matruh
military veteran identity
Mk Member
National Liberation
Np Government
Ordinary Springboks
Poor White Men
postwar social justice struggles
Prime Minister Smuts
race relations South Africa
South Africa's Racial Order
South African Jewish
South African National Defence Force
South Africa’s Racial Order
Springbok Legion
Tommy Guns
Torch Commando
United Democratic Front
veteran political activism
White Party Politics
White Poverty
White Servicemen
White South African Men
White Troops
White Veterans
White Volunteers
Young Man
Product details
- ISBN 9781138620100
- Weight: 740g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 12 Oct 2020
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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'Springbok' was a term used to describe the 200,000 white South African men who volunteered to serve during the Second World War. Volunteers developed bonds of comradeship, and rites of passage were expressed in the idiom of 'the front'. Without exception, volunteers nurtured hopes for some form of post-war 'social justice'. Neil Roos provides a fresh approach in considering comradeship and social justice ethnographically, as a way of focusing on ordinary Springboks' expectations and experiences during and after the war. As troops were demobilized, the contradictions of social justice in a colonial society were exposed. The majority of white veterans used the memory of service to stake their claim as white men who had served their country, and to negotiate a better position for themselves within the context of segregated colonial society. However, social justice amongst white veterans did not necessarily assume a racist character. A small group of radical white veterans invoked their war experience and traditions of anti-fascism to challenge the very precepts of racialized South African society. These veterans featured in the struggle against apartheid during the 1950s, and were especially prominent in the shift towards armed resistance to apartheid in 1961. Drawing heavily on the testimony of veterans, the book includes previously unreferenced documentary and visual material on the history of white servicemen, including official responses such as military intelligence reports on the political mood of serving soldiers, as well as material produced by veterans' organisations, such as the Springbok Legion, the War Veterans' Torch Commando and the Memorable Order of Tin Hats (MOTH). Roos offers a new framework for examining the social, cultural and political history of whites (and whiteness) in South Africa. The book will appeal to those interested in the elaboration of apartheid society and the types of acceptance and resistance that it engendered, and will also co
Dr Neil Roos is Lecturer at the Department of Education, University of Pretoria, South Africa.
