Open AccessTHE STATE OF SOUTH AFRICAN MILITARY HISTORIOGRAPHY ON THE SADF'S INVOLVEMENT IN SOUTH WEST AFRICA AND ANGOLA: 1966 TO 1989
Historical works regarding the South African Defence Force, have appeared since 1920. With a few exceptions, most of these works are official histories. This may, in part, be ascribed to the fact that the military archives were closed to research until 1948. Since then a number of studies, mostly theses, have appeared.
More recently, the so-called "Bush War" has come to dominate South African military historiography. Most of the writers in this field are journalists and the historians in the employ of the SADF, with relatively few theses being written. Most of their works are of the drum and trumpet type, with the result that a broadly-based history describing the total development of the war and the interconnection of political and military events, has still to be written.
The majority of the existing studies have been written from the South African perspective. Researchers are practically dependant upon local sources, many of which, for various reasons, are still inaccessible. The captured enemy documents are few, incomplete and fragmentary.