(Part 2) Best south african history books according to redditors

Indeed, just like the Israeli-, the Rhodesian military history is usually romanticised, instead of seriously and critically reviewed.

It's not only 'bullet-related war crimes' that are simply ignored: there's no end of praise for 'Fire Force tactics', although the Egyptians developed their own version already in Yemen of mid-1960s, and the Rhodesian deployment of chemical weapons was entirely ignored until only recently (for details, see Dirty War).

Similarly, and just like in the case of the SWAPO in Namibia (i.e. South Africans), it seems that nobody out there 'wonders' how comes - or why - the insurgents were receiving such a steady stream of thousands of recruits, regardless how 'successful', indeed, 'murderously effective', the 'highly successful security services' were, or should have been...

People who never wear shoes will actually develop pretty thick callouses on their feet over the course of their lifetime. When Shaka kaSenzangakhona created the Zulu Kingdom at the beginning of the 19th Century, one of his innovations was to outlaw sandals so all of his warriors would be able to run cross-country without complaint. There are several recorded instances where British and Boers visited old battlefields years later and saw the Zulu dead had been reduced to just skeletons and the thick skins on the soles of their feet: Everything else had been eaten or weathered away.

Source: My go-to with almost anything on the Zulu is always John Laband's excellent The Rise & Fall of the Zulu Nation. That book is damned-near definitive. Don't get me wrong: I'm a big fan of Ian Knight too, but it is a crying shame Laband's work isn't better known.

In my opinion the best book about the conflict is this one: https://www.amazon.com/South-Africas-Border-War-1966-89/dp/1909982016/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1500700478&sr=8-10&keywords=south+african+border+war

The documentary is great and there is an English version. I haven't been able to find it. If anyone can find it, please post it here. I would greatly appreciate it!!!!!!!!!!!!

In the book Vlamgat, Dick Lord explains that during the South African border war, the Air Force used this exact method to determine the locations of enemy radar installations. Only a handful of the the Mirage F1s was fitted with a compact RWR but the Buccanneers did have them. They would triangulate positions of enemy radars after every sortie flown.

They even made one SAM (Think it was an SA-8) location, determined in this way, the target for one Mirage F1AZ (which had an INS navigation/targeting system) to drop its stick of eight mk-82s (The rest of the flight was attacking an EW radar installation nearby), which it did and that particular SAM radar stopped emitting after that. Keep in mind that Angola has mostly thick bush and spotting anything on the ground from a fast jet is near impossible. It was destroyed using only the RWR triangulation and an INS system. Pretty neat.

Since I didn't see it noted by anyone else, I'll also mention their involvement with Umkhonto We Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the African National Congress of South Africa (ANC). MK had training camps all over Angola, and many of the soldiers there were trained by Cuban soldiers particularly with the max exodus out of South Africa following the Soweto Uprisings of 1976. I interviewed a lot of MK soldiers from that era and they cited a large presence of Cuban instructors in the camps, who trained the new recruits, and eventually trained MK soldiers to take over the training. Many also mentioned going out of the camps and fighting South African and UNITA troops alongside the Cuban soldiers. For a brief look at Cuba's relationship with the ANC in Angola, try this article.
As for Russia's influence, they mostly supplied MK with weapons and supplies in Angola, though many Russians came through the camps to visit, and a lot of more advanced training was done in the USSR and other Eastern Bloc countries. For a great book detailing that relationship, check out Vladimir Shubin's ANC: A view from Moscow. (This also addresses the Cuban involvement in Angola as I recall.)
As for the 8 nuclear weapons, I've never heard that they were given directly to the apartheid government, but there was a nuclear program involving the USA, Israel, and South Africa. South Africa likes to make a big deal of the fact that they scrapped their nuclear weapons and program, but I always felt that the outgoing apartheid government didn't want to let them fall into the hands of the incoming black government and got rid of them for that reason.

Thanks man, appreciate that.

Ja I have read several books on the war, I'll list them all so you can maybe pick one up one day.

The South African Border War 1966-1989 by Leopold Scholtz - I highly recommend this book. This is the book that really got me to understand the overall picture of the war although reading the other books and online material as well as speaking to relatives that fought in the war helped fill in the gaps for me.

32 Battalion by Piet Nortje - This book is also excellent. Goes into a lot of detail about personal accounts and experiences of members of 32 Battalion. They were tough buggers, 32Bn was made up of many Angolan nationals that were once part of the FNLA but were cut off and abandoned by their leader Holden Roberto so Jan Breytenbach trained them and thus 32 Battalion was born. Sad what happened to these poor guys after the war... The ANC just prior to coming to power demanded they be disbanded 1993. There is footage of their last parade and disbandment on Youtube. They were real battle hardened soldiers... They deserved better.

Zulu Zulu Foxtrot by Arn Durand - This is a book about his experience in the police COIN unit called Koevoet. These okes were hard as nails driving Casspirs over the enemy insurgents and tied them to their vehicles after killing them. Brutal... There is no such thing as a gentleman's war. No side played fair. SWAPO conducted many atrocities and Koevoet did the same. So it is futile for either side to claim evil yet SWAPO often complained to the UN about Koevoet and when South Africa complained to the UN about SWAPO atrocities which fell on deaf ears. The political bias was clearly evident and is revealed and mentioned many times in every book I've listed here.

Teenage Safari by Evan Davies the memoirs of a 61 Mech mortar man. 61 Mech was South Africa's iron fist our primary mechanized unit. They were the ones that smashed the Angolan and Cubans on the ground time and time again. They were primarily used for conventional battles although they did see some action against SWAPO as well which was almost exclusively COIN/guerrilla warfare.

LZ HOT! by Nick Lithgow - Memoirs of a South African Air Force helicopter pilot. He flew SAAF Alouette III gunships as well as Puma and Atlas Oryx transport helicopters. He also did a stint on the border as part of the infantry prior to receiving pilot training IIRC.

Eye of the Firestorm by Roland de Vries - This is a long one... The memoirs of a Commander of 61 Mech. There is a lot more to say about this book but my comment is getting quite long! It's very detailed and goes into the whole history of 61 Mech and the overall war itself. Though is quite complicated to read at times due to the complex nature of the war and all the operations, units involved and so on.

Recce by Koos Stadler - A book about the Recces (South African Special Forces) and Koos Stadler a very renowned Recce. The accomplishments and actions of the Recces are something else entirely... Ranging from sitting right inside enemy camps to gather intel for weeks if not months on end. To directing artillery and airstrikes strikes over enemy positions deep inside Angola, cutting off supply lines to destroying the SWAPO headquarters, shooting down Russian transport aircraft such as Antonov AN-12's with Soviet officers on board. There are many insane stories about the Recces a truly hard bunch as well as a small unit being only a few hundred members strong IIRC.

Mobility Conquers: The Story of 61 Mechanised Battalion Group 1978-2005 by Willem Steenkamp (Author), Helmoed-Römer Heitman (Author) - Haven't read this one either also very expensive! But apparently a very in depth book about South African mobile warfare doctrine during the Border War.

Mobile Warfare for Africa by Roland de Vries - Haven't read this either but should be a good one since Roland de Vries is one of the founding fathers of South African mobile warfare doctrine and tactics during the Border War.

It's seem almost disrespectful to do so after reading this and this. I bought these two books after I picked up the rifle.My feelings for the SMLE are the same as the local Mosin Kommisars feel about it.

Sorry for the late response here.

Basically, the British established these camps as refugee camps initially. These camps became very crowded as the British destroyed land as they came across it (think Russia's scorched earth in World War II). However, when the Boer's insurgent warfare methodology was proving difficult to defeat militarily (very similar to how America found itself unable to defeat insurgents in the Middle East), they began turning the refugee camps in to concentration camps.
Conditions were poor, food was scarce, and Boers were dying in droves from disease. The British essentially gave the Boer fighters the ultimatum of continuing to fight and having their families die in these camps, or forfeit and have their families back.
To this day, it is one of the rare examples of an effective anti-insurgent strategy.
Good books for further reading:

Diamonds, Gold, and War by Martin Meredith

The Boer War: A History by Denis Judd

Jaeger: At War with Denmark's Elite Special Forces dudes book brought down the head of their ministry of defense and a few other officials.

Also there is a shit ton on individuals/units/battalions on Rhodesia and South Africa.

Portugal’s War in Angola is the best overview of Portugal’s Colonial War in Africa.

Counterinsurgency in Africa: The Portuguese Way of War 1961-74 by John Cann An excellent book on counter insurgency. Cann also has quite a few books on Africa.

On YouTube search for Al J Venter’s South Africa Border War docs, he did quite a few. Venter is probably the best military journalist in regards to all the wars in Africa since the 1960’s. He written like 20 books on the subject.

Hi u/DanKensington! Sorry for the delay in reply. I was between conferences and I was also trying to do more research on black troops in the SADF as a few others have been asking about this as well.

As dagaboy pointed out, I did address this to some degree here but I'll throw in a quick reply anyway. (Also, thanks for bringing to my attention Pessimals' work, very interesting. I'll look into learning more about it!)

So, Pessimal is largely correct but it's a bit more nuanced than that. I would advise picking up copies of Blake's Troepie: From Call-Up to Camps and JH Thompson's An Unpopular War to read accounts of the war as told by the troepies (Afrikaans slang for Border War soldiers) which do mention their feelings on their black comrades. I have also interviewed several white, SADF veterans in the past and they have said similar things to this:

Effectively, once a soldier was past basics and was deployed on foreign soil (which was usually considered north South-West Africa (SWA - today Namibia) and Angola) and had experienced a bit of army life on the Border, and some combat for good measure, you learnt to trust the man who had your back, regardless of skin colour or creed. But, like I said, it was a bit more nuanced than that.

You had white soldiers who never had a problem with race in the first place and were fine with black soldiers, and even happier for it in some cases. You had some who changed their views whilst on deployment as, for many of them, it would be the first time they would be directly and regularly interacting with a black man, let alone fighting back-to-back with him. And, of course, there were those who stayed racist regardless. An interesting point is that some of this latter category would treat the black men they fought with with amazing civility and even respect on the Border, but would go right back to their old ways when at home. Cultural and systemic racism is a large part of Border War socio-military studies.

But there were also many different nationalities of black soldier - there were those from South Africa, SWA, Angola, Botswana and even Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe). And many of the white troepies treated each nationality different depending on their own personal affiliation or understanding. Bear in mind that many of the troepies were young conscripts of no more than 18 years of age, so this was a whole new world of war and experiences.

That's ground level, at the upper echelons of SADF command, much effort was made to make the SADF seem "inclusive" as the war progressed. See, the SADF had this awful reputation worldwide (and locally) as a dog of the Apartheid government, only used to enforce racial segregation at home and abroad. So, to attempt to dispel this, part of their carefully constructed propaganda campaigns involved showing how they integrated multiple religions, sports and races into the SADF structure which included black, coloured, Indian, and Asian persons. Part of this was partial integration into certain battalions where they saw regular combat - however, much of the actual usage of black SA and SWA troepies was in logistics. Angolan soldiers were mostly used in guerrilla or information gathering capacities by the SADF.

Many veterans today (white and black) talk fondly of their brothers-in-arms, and even of their enemies, and even though many will be outright racist and contemptuous of modern blacks, they will state their comrades were cut from a different cloth and will treat them equally.

It's very nuanced and fascinating how race played a role in SADF operations.

Anyway, apologies that this became longer than intended, but I hope that helps answer your question somewhat!

There's some environmental information in a number of books too. Depending on what you're interested in, rural poverty and livelihoods are in Jocelyn Alexander's The Unsettled Land (covering the whole sweep 1890-1980) and Terry Ranger's Voices from the Rocks about the Matopos Hills. Probably the best general book to come out recently is Becoming Zimbabwe (Mlambo and Raftopoulos). That will contain a lot of cites and further sources about the Bush War era and the events leaving up to it.

[Edit: I also teach in the Pacific Northwest of the US--so I know all about the monochromatic demography in a lot of areas. But it's shocking how large an African expat community there actually is here--and how much interest there is in African studies provided the institutional support exists. Right now I get about 100-120 students per survey class, per term, which means that I see about 1/40 of the students who pass through here sometime during their stay. It's an enormous shame if your Uni doesn't go ahead with it, especially if they have faculty coverage, because that's the only way to build sustained interest.]

I have these ones at home

The rise and fall of napoleon (2 books)

I got this one on the rise and fall of the Zulu nation on the recommendation of a redditor in askhistorians but this one focuses more on Shaka himself. The first one has a good bit on Cetshwayo who faced the British in the Anglo Zulu wars and the second I mentioned has more on Shaka facing the Nguni nations and forming the Zulus into an empire. You'll enjoy the bits on how he changed the culture into a militirised one, created the regiments and their banners and so on.

The Path of Blood. About Mzilikazi former chief under Shaka and one of his generals who split away to forge the Ndebele nation. Lots of war and conquest stuff in that one.




Ahh... Just seen that there's a fourth I don't have! Great Commanders of the modern world

I'd like to see one about the Darien scheme and that wish is getting fulfilled via the Ragnar Brothers.

Angola (which actually got a great board game in 1988, also, weirdly, by the Ragnar Brothers) is far from tapped out with another forthcoming volume of the COIN series.

Algeria has been covered ably and is being covered again by a COIN volume, Colonial Twilight.

Bomber Command is an excellent treatment of the Allied WWII bombing of Germany, with all the moral ambiguity that entails. Guaranteed to win over the crowd.

I'd like to see a wargame series on the 20th century's Bush Wars and other, often proxy, conflicts, using a hybrid wargame system. Not just Rhodesia and the South African Border War, but also those in South America and Asia, dodging the big names like Afghanistan and Vietnam, which have had plenty of coverage. I envision a tight, versatile system involving conventional units represented by the usual counters, and insurgent/COIN units and area control with different representation (no idea how, currently). That would appear to make interactions complex but also allow for any mixture of conventional/COIN strategy, with limitations varying by scenario. A series of volumes with plenty of attention to detail based on the scholarship that has taken place since then, like GMT's Next War or COIN. I can dream.

I would love to see more, or indeed any, games about the struggles of the lower classes throughout history, whether that be for rights and freedoms, social movements, worker's movements, etc. I think it was Barcelona: The Rose of Fire's description that really showed the kind of callous disregard for the average man that is so common in board games. Typically, you're controlling craftsmen and women, or the upper classes, those with disposable income and social mobility, which is where the freedom of choice lies in terms of the usual game design, but once you realise the feudal system as taught to you is at best a gross oversimplification, the meaningless lives of the poor take on rather more import. I know it's more difficult in terms of doing the work, with your average peasant having rather less written about him than your average king, but it is possible.

recommended reading

I'm currently reading this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/COME-BACK-PORTOFINO-James-Bourhill/dp/1920143564

Detailed and insightful accounts of the 6th South African Armoured Division's inception and deployment in the Italian Campaign. Makes you wish SA celebrated these men as their fellow WW2 soldiers are in the UK and US.

I have the same problem, the only really good books I have found were individual country profiles, but they tended to pick up the story around the time the Europeans setup shop there, which isn't really what you are looking for. The only book that I have really enjoyed was a journal on the Boer War called Commando but again this is probably not what you are looking for

Having immigrated to the land of the allegedly free from an ex-British colony in Africa, where American media influences competed with the British heritage, I dare say I have seen more than my fair share of inconsistencies in approaches to English, such as would make a computational linguist's hair stand on end. I parry your Babycham with a stick of biltong, and absorb your yarg with a cubic rood of mieliepap.

30 Bullies by Alison Kervin gives a good account of the first couple of Rugby World Cups. Entertaining to discover how amateur it was in 1987 and the juxtaposition to the professional era.

I also second Playing The Enemy by John Carlin.