Police officers and soldiers of apartheid
Losers in the new South Africa
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4845599 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Laetitia Bucaille (Victor (Japan), corresponding author) |
| Year | 2006 |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue | 189 |
| Pages | 433-446 |
| Publication date | 2006-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Social Science Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0020-8701 • E-ISSN: 1468-2451 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1468-2451.2007.00642.x |
| OpenAlex | W1915490367 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 6 |
Like most South African whites the soldiers and police officers who served under apartheid now admit that non-racial democracy is a more legitimate system. How then can they account for their participation in the war or in the repression when they try to dissociate themselves from a regime described as unjust and that oppressed blacks? The former soldiers and police officers reject any personal responsibility in their work during apartheid. This distancing strategy, however, makes expressing a collective identity problematic. At the same time, they are not slow to show pride in their work. In order to preserve their self-esteem they attempt to reconcile contradictory positions, pleading not guilty to the charges of supporting apartheid while claiming personal merit for having participated in the war undertaken by the regime. Their tour de force consists in assuming responsibility for the conflict in which they participated while dissociating themselves from its ideological implications. Their discourse is therefore profoundly ambivalent: it combines conservative or even reactionary analyses with an acceptation of the new system and adherence to the values conveyed by the new democracy, or even an appropriation of the South African miracle itself
Alienation · Appropriation · Collective responsibility · Democracy · Ideology · Political science · Politics · Pride · Racism · Reactionary · Sociology · Gender Studies · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Law · Legal Issues in South Africa · South African History and Culture
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |