Bodies and Borders: Vietnam/Namibia

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Notes

¹ Thank you to David Simpson and Margie Ferguson for listening—this paper is for you. Michael was killed in 1986 in a gruesome car accident with six other national servicemen, travelling from Pretoria to their air force training base at Hammanskraal.

² Available at www.freedompark.co.za/theproject.php (accessed 6 March 2007).

³ Ibid.

⁴ Available at www.freedompark.org.za.

⁵ See, for example, the report in the Mail & Guardian, 30 January 2007, available at www.mg.co.za.

⁶ www.freedompark.org.za.

⁷ Mail & Guardian, 30 January 2007, www.mg.co.za.

⁸ Available at www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8frpl10.txt.

⁹ “And should anyone ask us/ What holds you here?/ We could not but answer/ We love South West!”

¹⁰ Andrew, Buried in the Sky.

¹¹ Interestingly, though, one South African informant, who was assigned to the South West Africa Territorial Forces, remembers this crossover terminology applying only to the SADF. The SWA Territorial Forces identified much more strongly with South West Africa, even if they were not local by birth and background.

¹² Cock, Colonels and Cadres, 92.

¹³ I use the terminology of the South African government at the time to reflect the way in which the soldiers were expected to read the border.

¹⁴ The Deer Hunter. Directed by Michael Cimino. London: EMI Films/Universal Films, 1978; Apocalypse Now. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Zoëtrope Studios, 1979.

¹⁵ My thanks to Vivian for these comments in an email dated 12 February 2007. He also notes, interestingly, that “In recent times, takers for the Vietnam War course have included sons and daughters of Border War veterans. They have also, through a semester abroad system, included scions, nephews and nieces of Vietnam veterans, and the encounters between South Africans and Americans have been mutually invigorating. In both cases, the war in Iraq appears to have rekindled interest in Vietnam, though South African students have sometimes also mentioned their parents’/uncles’ etc. participation in ‘our Vietnam.’ ” I should also mention that two Masters theses were produced at UCT in 2003, both as a response to perceived links between Vietnam and the Border War. Partly inspired by the course on Vietnam and film, Dylan Craig wrote his thesis in Historical Studies on “The Viewer as Conscript: Dynamic Struggles for Ideological Supremacy in the South African Border War Film, 1971–1988,” and Gretchen Rudham, an American married to a South African, wrote her thesis for the English Department on “Lost Soldiers from a Lost War: A Comparative Study of the Collective Experience of Soldiers of the Vietnam War and the Angolan/Namibian Border War”—her naming of the Border War poses interesting debate. I recall her being particularly happy at the willingness of ex-SADF conscripts to be interviewed by her. The issue of “collective experience” is explored below. (Both theses are available from the library of the University of Cape Town.)

¹⁶ Mason, In Country, 212, 214.

¹⁷ Herzog, Vietnam War Stories.

¹⁸ Baines, “South Africa's Vietnam.”

¹⁹ Wolfswinkel, “Leaving ‘Nam,’ but not Going Home.”

²⁰ It may be worth noting that Milne's play, for all that it is a society comedy, raises questions germane to the ex-combatant's re-entry into society. So, for example, we have the following scene with “the boy,” Philip, taunting his uncle James with his gun:PHILIP. I wonder. Does it ever occur to you, Uncle James, that there are about a hundred thousand people in England who own revolvers, who are quite accustomed to them and—who have nobody to practise on now?And a little later:PHILIP. Ah, but you mustn’t think that after four years of war one has quite the same ideas about the sanctity of human life. How could one?

²¹ Wolfswinkel, “Leaving ‘Nam,’ but not Going Home,” 173.

²² Another comparative point of reference pertaining to soldiers returning from Vietnam/the Border may be found in the work of Cock (1994) and Sandler (1989) who both use Robert Jay Lifton's work on PTSD in examining the effects of the Border War on South African soldiers. Sasha Gear of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation has also written substantial work on the difficulties ex-combatants experience without effective rehabilitation programmes: see “Now that the War is Over—Ex-combatants Transition and the Question of Violence: A Literature Review,” Violence and Transition Series, April, www.csvr.org.za/pubslist/pubsmil.htm.

²³ Statement by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Western and Northern Cape Regions, TRC Awaiting Special Submission from Former SADF, 29 April 1997, www.info.gov.za/speeches/1997/04300y85397.htm (accessed March 2007).

²⁴ Gobodo-Madikizela, A Human Being Died That Night.

²⁵ Ibid., 112–13.

²⁶ Kalahari Surfers, http://music.download.com/kalaharisurfers/3600-8992_32-100893691.html (accessed March 2007).

²⁷ Tham, “What Happened to the Boys on the Border?” www.geocities.com/oddjobman/citylife.htm.

²⁸ Tham's piece may be accessed via the depressingly thin and hopelessly outdated “Unofficial SADF Information Page,” www.geocities.com/odjobman/index.htm.

²⁹ Jeffords, The Remasculinization of America.

³⁰ Ibid., 6.

³¹ Ibid.

³² Ibid., 25.

³³ Thompson, An Unpopular War. Afkak and bosbefok are scatological Afrikaans terms meaning to be crapped on (by authority) and to be fucked in the head by being in the bush for too long.

³⁴ Ibid., vii.

³⁵ Interestingly, Britain's Imperial War Museum recently sponsored a “Forgotten Voices” series to memorialize, on tape and in text, the voices of the soldiers of World Wars I and II. In the texts, the individual stories are also rearranged to document the progress of the wars. A fuller exploration of the narrative and ideological effects of these texts would be worth undertaking. The most obvious point of difference, of course, is that both these wars have been held up as events that can be narrated in more traditional ways that conform to nineteenth-century ideals—both formally and morally (see Arthur, Forgotten Voices of the Great War and Forgotten Voices of the Second World War).

³⁶ Draper, “Discourses of the Border War,” 189.

³⁷ Thompson, An Unpopular War, x.

³⁸ Cock, “Gun Violence and Masculinity in Contemporary South Africa.”

³⁹ Gibson, Warrior Dreams.

⁴⁰ Coetzee, Dusklands and Waiting for the Barbarians. See also Haarhoff, The Wild South-West.

⁴¹ There is also Pamela Jooste's Like Water in Wild Places, which expresses a rather more hopeful outcome for her soldier protagonist. The issue of gender and authorship in war narratives is obviously worth exploring further. In the theatre, Greig Coetzee's White Men With Weapons (performed 1996) and Athol Fugard's Playland (1992) are notable.

⁴² Barnard, “The Smell of Apples, Moby Dick, and Apartheid Ideology,” 207.

⁴³ In 1987, Taurus Publishers bravely produced a collection of short stories in English and Afrikaans called Forces’ Favourites (a parodic reference to Patricia Kerr's popular radio request program). It is now very difficult to find copies for purchase. I have searched in vain for evidence that Karen Batley's proposed anthology of creative work by soldiers was ever published (see her interview with Brendan Seery, “Tales from the Hell that Haunts Us All,” Sunday Star, 6 October 1991, www.geocities.com/odjobman/batley.htm (accessed March 2007).

⁴⁴ The Stick. Directed by Darrell Roodt. London: Distant Horizon, 1987; On the Wire. Directed by Elaine Proctor. London: National Film and Television School, 1990. Gavin Hood's fine film, A Reasonable Man (1999, African Media Entertainment/M-Net/Moviworld), uses the Border War as a backstory for the protagonist.

⁴⁵ Coming Home. Directed by Hal Ashby. Jerome Hellman Productions/Jayne Productions Inc.

⁴⁶ Platoon. Directed by Oliver Stone. Cinema 86/Hemdale Film Corp., 1986.

⁴⁷ Matthew went into the army in 1985, after the classic Vietnam films had been released. This is also the brother who read his experience through Joseph Heller's Catch-22, confirming common critical wisdom that that novel about the Second World War was really about the grotesque absurdities of the Vietnam War (and, by implication, the Border War). My brother paints a particularly vivid picture of arriving in Pretoria late at night after a pass, and feeling like Yossarian in Rome.

⁴⁸ Tham, “What Happened to the Boys on the Border?”