A BLACK FOREIGN LEGION IN SOUTH AFRICA?

Abstract

African Defence Force in 1963, the National Party government in the Republic of South Africa has experimented with a variety of roles, responsibilities and organizational formats for their use in the armed forces. With 'Coloureds' and 'Indians', these experiments were relatively straightforward. They were not confused or hampered by the sorts of questions that arise with the mobilization of black African troops. Given the government's professed commitment to the eventual implementation of the Homelands/Bantustan scheme whereby all black South Africans must be associated in an as yet unclear fashion with some 'homeland', in various stages of elaboration, there seems to be a logical dilemma built into the creation of black units. This article will concentrate on the black (that is, indigenous African) units and the political/legal issues that their recruitment and deployment raise. Because quite naturally so little has been made public about their employment, a premium will be placed on an accurate and fairly complete description of these units, their structure, composition, preparation, utility and general place in the SADF scheme of things. By the time the Chief of the Army, Lieutenant General Magnus Malan, granted permission to establish the South African Army Bantu Training Centre in November 1973, the SADF had acquired some limited experience with black fighting men. The Cape Corps (Coloured) had been in existence for almost ten years and its Special Service Battalion for nearly a year. Blacks had served in large numbers in the South African Police and had been both involved in military duties in Rhodesia and in patrolling South Africa's borders, and the SADF had employed on an individual basis indigenous blacks in Namibia. In addition, most white opposition to the military use of blacks had been won over to this more flexible approach. It was no longer an issue of whether to use blacks, but how many, in what roles, and in what organizational format. For the Republic of South Africa, the land of the 'white man's war' and the last bastion of 'white Christian nationalism', the time had arrived to defend the regime by any and all means. Caliban clearly had to be issued with an automatic weapon.