Widening the Archival Sliver: Availing and Available Archival Materials Tied to Apartheid-Era African-Staffed Military Forces

Abstract: African-staffed apartheid-era military forces now command scholarly attention. I outline relevant archival holdings that survived the mass destruction of documentation as apartheid crumbled, suggesting that additional publicly available materials exist in underutilized archives. Composed of both official and vernacular materials, these sources are less likely to support research into studies of military tactics or strategy, but they offer glimpses into the day-to-day mechanics of these forces and more vividly, the militarized cultural worlds underpinning them. They offer insights into labor, cultural, and social histories. This has relevance for southern African history, and more broadly, for scholars interested in colonial military rule, democratization, the Cold War, and colonialism and its aftermath in Africa. I conclude by calling on scholars to work with military veterans and their families to facilitate archival donations.