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| African soldier with his assegai |
SOUTH AFRICA
At the start of World War II there were only 3,353 men in the South African Army with a further 14,631 in the Active Citizen
Force (ACF). However they were only trained and equipped solely for bush warfare within southern Africa. South Africa
had a serious shortage of available men to serve in the armed forces. There were two reasons for this. One was that
the Government would only consider men of European descent aged between 20 and 40 years of age as eligible to serve; the other
was that many Afrikaans people were anti-British and actively opposed to the War.
In order to free up the number of whites to fight and provide technical
services, a number of units were created which allowed drivers and foot soldiers from the Cape Coloured and Asian populations
to join up.
Units made up of blacks
were also formed to provide labour. These units were not allowed to take part in fighting against Europeans. Those people
of non-European, coloured or black African heritage were only able to join the following special units: Cape Corps for coloureds Indian & Malay Corps for Asians Native Military Corps for blacks
The South African authorities had a general policy of not providing these units with firearms, as they feared that
the units could lead an armed uprising against them. Instead, the units were armed with traditional weapons such as assegais (spears) and knobkierries (clubs).
About
92,000 men volunteered and served in these units. A further 15,000—20,000 black Africans worked as casual labourers
on various military bases throughout the country.
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