Bodies and Borders: Vietnam/Namibia
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2007
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Safundi: Journal of South African and American Comparative Studies
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University of Cape Town
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Abstract
Ten years ago I sat at a kitchen table in a beautiful home at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Boulder, Colorado, and told my hosts the history of my three brothers, all of whom had been conscripts in the South African Defence Force (SADF), each of whose lives demanded that a different kind of story be told. And so the discussion developed: how would one—how would I—ever tell that story, those stories? My listeners suggested that the story I could (should?) tell would be the story of the sister who couldn’t save her brothers, each of whom had given up his life either metaphorically or, in the case of the youngest, literally. I have been haunted ever since by the beckoning specter of that story that the sister should (try to) tell. The urgency grows as the years go by and the history of South Africa’s ‘‘Border War’’ becomes an increasingly ill-defined and contested one.
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Reference:
Marx, L. (2007). Bodies and Borders: Vietnam/Namibia. Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies, 8(1), 91-102.