Peoples, societies, institutions and other entities frequently record their histories in terms of successive epochs, and commemorate those histories according to perceived milestones or turning points in their development. ...

During the Great War, aircraft were used primarily for reconnaissance and artillery spotting. The Union of South Africa's First World War campaign in German South West Africa (GSWA) allowed for South Africa's first employment ...

Die Suid-Afrikaanse gemeenskap is blootgestel aan snelle veranderinge wat noodwendig 'n neerslag vind in die SA Weermag en die Militêre Akademie op Saldanha. Dit is egter nie net die veranderinge wat hul invloed laat geld ...

South Africa’s decision to enter the First World War was not easy. After a difficult interplay between Whitehall and Tuinhuis, the Botha government agreed to secure limited strategic objectives in neighbouring German South ...

Some one hundred years ago, South Africa was torn apart by the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). To mark this cataclysmic event, Covos-Day is publishing a series of books. The first is a facsimile of Donald Macdonald's ...

Bambatha is widely known as the chief who led a group of men to confront the Natal colonial government in protest against poll tax. He lived in a broken, sandy and stoney area known as Mpanza valley, to the north of Greytown, ...

Writing about the Namibian Border War and South African involvement in the Angolan Civil War is difficult. Many South Africans have been conscripted or willingly served in the military at the time and find it difficult to ...

2012 has a double significance for this year sees the centenary of the founding of the African National Congress (8 January) and of the creation of the Union Defence Forces (1 July), two organisations that have for much ...

In August 1991 a Committee for State Emergencies, consisting of the minister of defence and the chief of the KGB, ousted Mikhail Gorbachev from power in the Soviet Union. The coup was important for several reasons. The ...

Most countries expect their armed forces to be broadly representative of the populace with respect to race, ethnic composition, social class, religion and gender. The concern, particularly with respect to the officer corps ...

The Battle of Sidi Rezegh in November 1941 and the fall of Tobruk in June 1942 were disastrous for South Africa. At Sidi Rezegh, the entire 5th South African Infantry Brigade was lost and at Tobruk the following year more ...

The South African Military Academy was established in 1950 as a branch of the SA Military College, under the academic auspices of the University of Pretoria. A mere three years later, in 1953, the Union Defence Force ...

Brigadier-General Wilfrid Malleson (1866–1946) received his commission into the Royal Artillery in 1886 and transferred to the Indian Army in 1904. He was relatively inexperienced in combat having served on the staff of ...

The South African campaign in German South West Africa (GSWA) during the First World War depended largely on the access, availability and control of all water sources in the operational area. The Union Defence Force (UDF) ...

By the latter half of 1942, the High Command of the German U-boats (BdU) realised that the ‘sinking results’ of the North Atlantic had decreased immensely. The successes of the Allied anti-submarine operations in the North ...

Introduction: Article 2 of the Charter of the United Nations (UN) implicitly recognises the validity of the concept of non-intervention, when it articulates ‘nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorise the ...

Many people’s view about war and its impact was changed by a woman named Dang Thuy Tram. Her diaries, which she kept as a practicing medical doctor during the Vietnam War, were published some forty odd years after her ...

Domestic history in South Africa is largely an unploughed field. Yet, for much of South Africa’s past, households were the places where concerns about class, gender and race intersected, at a very close, personal, level. ...

From historical writings to current day, morale has always been regarded as a major determinant of success on the battlefield. The management of morale is thus also important in the South African National Defence Force ...

There has been limited development in South African military law since the inception of the Union Defence Force in 1912. Military law has mainly evolved as a way to enforce discipline in a force consisting of mostly ...