For nearly three decades, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), waged a violent revolutionary struggle against the apartheid state in South Africa. Stephen Davis works with extensive oral testimonies and the heroic myths that were constructed after 1994 to offer a new history of this armed movement. Davis deftly addresses the histories that reinforce the legitimacy of the ANC as a ruling party, its longstanding entanglement with the South African Communist Party, and efforts to consolidate a single narrative of struggle and renewal in concrete museums and memorials. Davis shows that the history of MK is more complicated and ambiguous than previous laudatory accounts would have us believe, and in doing so he discloses the contradictions of the liberation struggle as well as its political manifestations.
By:
Stephen R. Davis
Imprint: Indiana University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9780253032287
ISBN 10: 0253032288
Pages: 312
Publication Date: 01 March 2018
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Unspecified
Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction 1. A Brief History of the Umkhonto we Sizwe and the Armed Struggle 2. ""I Am Not Prepared to Answer at This Stage"": History, Evidence and the Mamre Camp, December 26–30, 1962 3. The Sight of Battle: Visuality, History, and Representations of the Wankie Campaign, July 31–September 8, 1967 4. Losing the Plot: Mystery, Narrativity and Investigation in Novo Catengue, May 1977–March 1979 5. Everyday Life during Wartime: Experience, Modes of Writing, and the Underground in Cape Town During the Long Decade of the 1980s Conclusion: Making the Struggle Concrete: Nationalist Historiography at Freedom Park Appendices Bibliography Index
Stephen Davis is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Kentucky.
Reviews for The ANC's War against Apartheid: Umkhonto we Sizwe and the Liberation of South Africa
The ANC's War against Apartheid is a masterful corrective to contemporary grand narratives about the military struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Its value and sheer usefulness for scholars and advanced students working on southern African political history cannot be overestimated. * American Historical Review *
