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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Missing voices: border war memories, meanings and archival musings
Author:Pickover, MicheleISNI
Year:2009
Periodical:Innovation: Journal of Appropriate Librarianship and Information Work in Southern Africa
Issue:39
Pages:73-87
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:oral history
apartheid
military operations
veterans
storytelling
memory
Abstract:The article discusses the archival oral history project launched by the Historical Papers Archive at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. The project, called 'Missing Voices: The Untold Stories of Apartheid's War?', involves collecting personal experiences, perceptions and stories from former members of the South African Defence Force (SADF), mainly ex-32 Battalion, ex-31 Battalion, other permanent force members and conscripts, and the Self Defence Units from Thokoza and Katlehong on the East Rand (Gauteng). The so-called 'Border War', which involved South African, Namibian and Angolan forces between 1975 and 1989, demands recollection and interpretation. 'Missing Voices' chose to engage with this part of South Africa's messy apartheid past and its memory traces through oral interviews and to raise questions not about what happened but about how events are experienced and remembered and how memory is passed on to successive generations. The project, which ran from July 2004 to June 2008, also examines the interviewees' understanding of the political forces and people they encountered and how their perceptions changed after 20 years. Bibliogr., notes, sum. [Journal abstract, edited]
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