The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

commissioned monumental portraits of all the designated returnees. 173 This was
biography of repression and dispersal turned into biography of triumph and return.
The process of demobilisation and reintegration of former MK and APLA guerrillas in the
mid‐1990s occurred as part of a process of tallying and rationalisation to create a united
defence force. Some were to be incorporated into the new national military while others
would be demobilised into civilian life. This process was also connected to the payment of
demobilisation gratuities of varying amounts depending on years of service. Biographic
methods were employed to determine who could be defined as a ‘combatant’ through the
compilation of a Certified Personnel Register (CPR). There were a number of difficulties in
compiling lists. MK and APLA had not kept detailed records of their members and in
many cases membership had been anonymous, with members known by pseudonyms.
When the CPR was finalised, many former MK and APLA combatants had been excluded
from the list, and were thus unable to secure demobilisation gratuities. Those excluded
continued to vouch for their combatant status by constructing their biographies on an
“MK/APLA Data Collection Form”, which requested material information about the
person’s military career, including courses and camps attended, military responsibilities
and present occupation. In addition three contactable referees had to be provided who
would be able to attest to the person’s military history. 174 A related biographic process
involved the determination of who fell into the category of ‘struggle veteran’. The Special
Pensions Act (No 69) passed in 1996 required the state to pay pensions to “people who
had made sacrifices” in the cause of establishing democracy in South Africa. These special
pensions were intended for those who had given “full‐time service in a liberation
movement” or who had been imprisoned, banned or forced into exile, and who had thus
been unable to provide for their own pensions. A special board set up to adjudicate
173 See the District Six Museum brochure specially produced for the occasion, ‘The Return’ (Cape
Town, District Six Museum, 11 February 2004); Nazma Dreyer, ‘Mandela hands over symbolic keys to
elders of District Six’, Cape Times, 12 February 2004. The portraits had been commissioned by the City
of Cape Town.
174 Lephophotho Mashike and Mafole Mokalobe, ‘Reintegration into civilian life: The case of former
MK and APLA combatants’, Track Two, Vol. 12, Nos. 1 and 2, September 2003; ‘MK/APLA Data
Collection Form’ (SANDF, n.d.).
253