Christian Williams, Review of: André du Pisani, Reinhart Kössler and William A. Lindeke, (eds.), The Long Aftermath of War – Reconciliation and Transition in Namibia, Freiburg, Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institut, 2010

During the Namibian border war, South African counterinsurgency doctrine acknowledged the importance of securing the allegiance and cooperation of the population. This article demonstrates that, in the operational zone, the responsibility of winning the hearts and minds of the Namibian people largely fell to the SADF (South African Defence Force). Although the SADF dedicated considerable resources to this task, these efforts were often at cross-purposes with those of institutions in the political, police and administrative domains. In addition, there was a lack of unity and purpose within the SADF. This article argues that lack of unity between and within the different domains undermined the effort at winning the hearts and minds of the Namibian population, and must at least partly have contributed to SWAPO´s victory in the 1989 elections. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Scientia Militaria - South African Journal of Military Studies, Vol 39, No 1 (2011), available online: http://scientiamilitaria.journals.ac.za/pub/article/view/103

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.

This ebook investigates the post-independence situation of those who fought on both sides of the Namibian liberation war. The findings are being used to develop community based, empowerment driven interventions aimed at improving the quality of life for ex-fighters and their families. The research was funded by the Brot fuer die Welt. Data from this research indicate that 15 years after the Namibian war for independence, ex-fighters still exhibit symptoms of long-term psychological distress with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The findings indicate there is a correlation between the life circumstances of ex-fighters and their lack of resilience to traumatic war experiences, with resiliency being linked to a number of protective factors such as the socio-economic situation of the survivors, their socio-political environment, their social support networks and their cognitive processes. It is argued that in the case of Namibian ex-fighters, long term psychological distress is different from a simple PTSD diagnosis because the survivor has almost invariably gone almost two decades without seeking treatment. Moreover, during this time, the ex-fighter has also been exposed to additional social and psychological stressors which, for a person not suffering from long-term psychological distress would only have a fleeting impact, but for a sufferer of long-term psychological distress, each life incident could reduce the survivor's resilience to trauma as well as triggering ‘flashbacks’.