The great storm of South Africa’s liberation struggle : bridging the gap between APLA and post-apartheid public & collective memory

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dc.contributor.advisor Ncube, Glen
dc.contributor.postgraduate Dlanga, Olwethu
dc.date.accessioned 2023-07-17T14:02:42Z
dc.date.available 2023-07-17T14:02:42Z
dc.date.created 2023-09
dc.date.issued 2023
dc.description Dissertation (MA (History))--University of Pretoria, 2023. en_US
dc.description.abstract The post-apartheid liberation historiography has been constructed and curated in a way that influences public and collective memory to assume that only one liberation movement (the African National Congress) was involved in the South African liberation struggle. The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and its armed wing, the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA), have largely been given perfunctory attention or totally ignored because of the selective politics of memory. In instances where the history of APLA and/or the PAC is given full attention, the focus has been on the leadership conflicts within it, at the expense of interrogating other important aspects within the movement. This thesis is a critical analysis of how public collective memory of post-apartheid South Africa has been curated, and it unpacks how victorious formations such as the ANC government have sought to entrench their political dominance by creating a skewed liberation narrative. This thesis further argues that this is related to the politico-philosophical inclinations of the dominant narrative that is hellbent on placing in the fringes radical ideas that are seen to have a potential of challenging the status quo. The thesis narrates the development of APLA, mapping its roots from the 1940’s confrontational spirit of African Nationalism to the establishment of the PAC in 1959. It then shows that the prohibition of PAC in 1960 led to it being overtly operated as Poqo – not that Poqo was a military wing of the PAC. This thesis dispels this notion by proving that PAC is Poqo. Furthermore, this thesis presents some of the major military activities of the PAC up until the ‘establishment’ of APLA in 1968 by the Africanist Task Force, which was the real paramilitary formation of the PAC before APLA. Although the thesis extensively discusses APLA interchangeably with the PAC, in the main chapters it delves into APLA operations and the experiences of cadres from exile through ‘return’ home and their post-apartheid integration and experiences within the new South African National Defence Force (SANDF) and their communities. en_US
dc.description.availability Unrestricted en_US
dc.description.degree MA (History) en_US
dc.description.department Historical and Heritage Studies en_US
dc.description.sponsorship Mellon funding scholarship en_US
dc.identifier.citation Dlanga, O, 2023, The Great Storm of South Africa’s Liberation Struggle: Bridging the gap between APLA and post-apartheid public & collective memory, Masters dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed 2023.07.17 http://hdl.handle.net/2263/91490 en_US
dc.identifier.other S2023
dc.identifier.other
dc.identifier.other
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/2263/91490
dc.language.iso en en_US
dc.publisher University of Pretoria
dc.rights © 2023 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria.
dc.subject UCTD en_US
dc.subject Collective memory en_US
dc.subject Historiography en_US
dc.subject APLA en_US
dc.subject PAC en_US
dc.subject Post-apartheid en_US
dc.title The great storm of South Africa’s liberation struggle : bridging the gap between APLA and post-apartheid public & collective memory en_US
dc.type Dissertation en_US


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