Discipline, punishment and defiance: guerrillas in the new South African National Defence Forces

ABSTRACT

In post-apartheid South Africa, on military integration, the new South African National Defence Forces (SANDF) faced numerous social and political challenges on integration, including former guerrillas absenting themselves from work without official leave. The paper examines the ways in which the Azania Peoples Liberation Army (APLA), an armed wing of the Pan Africanist Congress understood the ‘new’ army barracks as racialised and dominated by white soldiers. However, I argue that both former guerrilla formations and the white-dominated soldiers, SADF were unwilling to compromise their past political ideological understanding which had shaped them prior to integration in the ‘new’ army. The paper examines how the military was understood by APLA guerrillas, in which discipline and punishment was viewed as racialised. However, the new army was also insulated with some ‘good moments. In substantiating my argument, I draw on 17 former APLA former guerrillas’ who were once integrated into the new army and left prematurely.

KEYWORDS:

• Military
• discipline
• punishment
• AWOL
• guerrilla

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Godfrey Maringira

Godfrey Maringira is an Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at Sol Plaatje University, South Africa. He is a Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg, Anthropology & Development Studies Department. He is a Senior Volkswagen Stiftung Foundation research fellow and Principal Investigator of the International Development Research Center, Canada (IDRC) on Gang violence project in South Africa. His areas of research include: armed violence and the military in post-colonial Africa. His 2017 African Affairs Journal article: “Politicisation and Resistance in the Zimbabwe National Army” was awarded the Best Author Price. In 2020, he was awarded the Benedict Vilakazi best author price, African Studies Journal (Routledge), for his article titled: “When ex-combatants became peaceful: Azania People's Liberation Army ex-combatants in post-apartheid South Africa”. He has published several other articles on the military in post-colonial Africa. He is the author of “Soldiers and the State in Zimbabwe”, (London, Routledge, 2019).