The Vocabulary of the Vietnam War: South African invocations of an analogy and its associated lessons

Abstract

This paper examines the use of the Vietnam analogy by protagonists involved in conflicts in the African sub-continent during the 1970s–1980s, known variously as the Apartheid Wars, the AngolanNamibian War or the Border War. It also analyses the attendant but typically specious lessons that military and political leaders are inclined to draw from the Vietnam analogy. It suggests that politicians and military professionals do not actually learn from the past: history provides a rhetorical device rather than an analytical tool and serves a political rather than a pedagogical purpose.