Analysing the interconnections between militarisation, sexuality, race, homophobia and political authoritarianism, Conway draws upon a range of materials and disciplines to produce this socio-political study. Military conscription and objection to it are conceptualised as gendered acts of citizenship and premised on and constitutive of masculinities. The ECC was the most significant white anti-apartheid social movement in South Africa. Masculinities, militarisation and the End Conscription Campaign explores the gendered dynamics of apartheid-era South Africa’s militarisation, analysing the defiance of compulsory military service by individual white men and the anti-apartheid activism of the white men and women in the End Conscription Campaign (ECC). It suggests that this controversy exemplifies the functioning of memory politics in transitional societies. This paper examines how Freedom Park became the site of struggle between self-styled representatives of SADF veterans and cultural elites of the post-apartheid order. A fracas followed the decision of the Park’s trustees to omit the names of deceased SADF soldiers from the Wall of Names. A commemorative crisis has also followed the erection of new memorials, such as Freedom Park, to honour heroes and heroines of the Liberation Struggle. These include tensions during the integration of the South African Defence Force (SADF) and the armed wings of the liberation movements. Contestations over the meaning and memory of the war have manifested themselves in a number of ways. Notwithstanding the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the legacy of this conflict remains divisive. This is true of South Africa’s Border War/Liberation Struggle, during which the white minority’s ‘terrorist’ became the black majority’s ‘freedom fighter’. The war of words or discursive struggle tends to be particularly acrimonious following civil wars. Every war is fought twice: militarily and then discursively.
0 kommentar(er)
