The Springbok Legion was a veterans' organisation and
anti-apartheid organisation in South Africa.
History
The Springbok Legion was founded in 1941.
In 1944, the legion came under the leadership of
Jack Hodgson and
Jock Isacowitz.
For the
1948 South African general election
General elections were held in South Africa on 26 May 1948. They represented a turning point in the country's history, as despite receiving just under half of the votes cast, the United Party and its leader, incumbent Prime Minister Jan Smuts, ...
, the Springbok Legion encouraged coloured South Africans to vote for the
United Party and the
Labour Party.
Springbok Legion considered the
National Party's efforts to further disenfranchise coloured South Africans and to rollback South African democracy as being akin to fascism or dictatorship. Additionally, the legion was one of many groups which opposed and resisted the
Suppression of Communism Act
The Suppression of Communism Act, 1950 (Act No. 44 of 1950), renamed the Internal Security Act in 1976, was legislation of the national government in apartheid South Africa which formally banned the South African Communist Party, Communist Party ...
.
By 1952, the Springbok Legion had 125,000 members.
At that years Springbok Legion conference,
Cecil Williams was elected as chairman.
Williams worked with
Bram Fischer
Abraham Louis Fischer (23 April 19088 May 1975) was a South African Communist lawyer of Afrikaner descent with partial Anglo-African ancestry from his paternal grandmother, notable for anti-apartheid activism and for the legal defence of anti- ...
to bring together the legion with the
Congress of Democrats
The Congress of Democrats (CoD) is a Namibian opposition party without representation in the National Assembly and was led by Ben Ulenga from 2004 to 2015. It was established in 1999, prior to that year's general elections, and started off w ...
, but before the organisations could unite, the Springbok Legion's offices were raided by police and Williams was ordered by the
Minister of Police to resign from any group of which he was a member.
''Fighting Talk''
In January 1942, the Homefront League of the Springbok Legion legion launched its newspaper ''Fighting Talk'', which was launched in Johannesburg. Fighting Talk was published monthly in both
English and
Afrikaans
Afrikaans is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language spoken in South Africa, Namibia and to a lesser extent Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and also Argentina where there is a group in Sarmiento, Chubut, Sarmiento that speaks the Pat ...
.
''Fighting Talk'' was forcibly disbanded by the Apartheid regime in February 1963.
See also
*
Apartheid South Africa
Apartheid ( , especially South African English: , ; , ) was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an ...
*
Torch Commando
The Torch Commando was a South African anti-apartheid organisation, born out of the work of the Springbok Legion, a South African organisation of World War II veterans, founded in 1941 during the Second World War, and the War Veterans Action ...
References
Citations
Works cited
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Further reading
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{{Political history of South Africa
1941 establishments in South Africa
Anti-apartheid organisations
Anti-fascism in South Africa
Anti-fascist organizations
Communism in South Africa
South African veterans' organisations