Thanks! Glad you’ve found value in the work.

This work would not have been possible without the support of many people. Thank you to @justinpearce.bsky.social for stewarding and helping me refine this article to publication as well as to @msimang.bsky.social for his support and feedback.

Their collective memories and identities bear the imprint of their foundational histories of war, dislocation and disbandment.

Both group identities remain tethered to militarisation: while one directly claims martial heroism and post-war neglect, the other is ostensibly distanced from the military but connected to an image and identity, underpinning their militarisation, as ‘Bushmen’.

This identity has been reinforced by participation in the post-Cold War human and indigenous rights framework.

Conversely, the 31 Battalion community has embraced an indigenous, San identity. They have grafted the racist ‘empty land’ myth onto their modern experiences of displacement and contemporary feelings of minoritisation.

To understand and frame themselves historically, 32 Battalion veterans turned to the central institution in their lives: the military. Viewing military service as epitomising national contribution, they identify as fallen heroes who ‘secured’ South Africa’s democratic transition.

Drawing on oral history interviews, I examine key historical narratives within each group to understand how their memory compositions reflect their identities and social positioning in post-apartheid society.

The apartheid-era South African Defence Force’s most notorious units, 31 Battalion and 32 Battalion, were composed of African troops. With the onset of Namibia’s 1990 independence, these soldiers and their families relocated to South Africa and adapted to a rapidly changing political landscape.

Thanks for friends and colleagues who provided thoughtful, generative feedback on earlier drafts of this work: @msimang.bsky.social Chichi Ayalogu, Francesco Fanti Rovetta, Rob Gordon, Brian Quinn, Travis Wright, Linda Waldman, Bernard C Moore, & Alan G Morris.

Marshalled towards different political projects, for all these actors, the bones nonetheless serve as a resource and link to a 19th century frontier past.

These motivations range from scientistic confirmation of genealogy and identity under apartheid rule, to post-apartheid calls for repatriation anchored to a global indigenous rights framework, to factional contestations over ownership.

By tracing the life history of Kok II’s remains, well past his natural life, we demonstrate how they serve as a flashpoint mobilized by actors with different aims and objectives at different moments.

The 2007 reinterment again courted controversy and protest, while the contemporary neglect of the new gravesite symbolizes feelings of exclusion and marginalization among some Campbell Griqua today.

The bones again took centre stage with the collapse of apartheid when different groups called for their return and reburial, with an assertion, variously, of ascendant Griqua, indigenous, Khoisan, and Khoikhoi identities.

Buried in 1858, Cornelis Kok II’s grave lay undisturbed in Campbell, Northern Cape, until 1961 when a multiracial coalition, driven by their own sets of interests, unearthed the Griqua leader’s remains.