Boer Propaganda During the South African War of 1899–1902
This article examines Boer propaganda on commando during the South African War by analysing how the two Boer governments and the military leadership endeavoured to inspire a citizen army and to keep the men in the field. In the South African War a commando was a Boer fighting unit, more or less the equivalent of a British regiment, and ‘on commando’ meant ‘in the field’. For the first seven months of the conflict, two important pro-Boer newspapers, De Volksstem and The Standard & Diggers' News were distributed on commando; carefully used, they exercised a significant impact on the combatants' morale. Later, in the guerrilla phase of the war, local newspapers, notably De Bazuin and De Zoutpansberg Wachter, often published under trying conditions, took their place. Furthermore, Boer officers played an important role by fanning patriotism in the ranks with their inspirational rhetoric. The Boer perception that his military and political cause was both just and noble before God was a useful propaganda tool, as were official war reports; they could, in addition to truths, include carefully selected half-truths and flagrant untruths.
The Dynamics of Treason : Boer Collaboration in the South African War of 1899-1902, Albert Grundlingh : book review
Almost thirty years ago, Albert Grundlingh, now Professor of History at the University of Stellenbosch, published his weighty MA dissertation in Afrikaans, entitled Die 'Hensoppers' en 'Joiners', an exhaustively researched, detailed and probing analysis of the experience of Boer collaboration with the British during the Anglo-Boer or South African War of 1899-1902. The dustjacket of that volume had a photograph of a very debonair-looking author. What a pity that the re-issue of the original Afrikaans text does not include a new picture for comparative historical interest. The appearance at last of this historiographically important text in good, plain English translation (by Bridget Theron) is to be lauded. Not only does it render an invaluable service to notoriously monolingual English-speaking scholars of the war. Beyond that, in more general terms, a classic work of originality and distinction should now find a more prominent place in any list of essential reading on the complex and contested terrain of white politics in pre-Union South Africa.
Atmospheric drag effects on the KOMPSAT-1 satellite during geomagnetic superstorms
We examine the atmospheric drag on the low earth-orbiting satellite, KOMPSAT-1 in a sun-synchronous orbit at ~685-km altitude starting in 1999, during a 3-month (October-December) period in 2003. This 3-month interval includes the October 29-30 and November 20 magnetic superstorms and weak to moderate storms. We observed that the daily KOMPSAT-1 drag acceleration transiently responses to transient storm-time disturbances. That is, there is an one-to-one correspondence between the KOMPSAT-1 drag accelerations and the storm events. We find that the drag acceleration correlates strongly with the level of geomagnetic disturbance. This indicates that the trajectory of KOMPSAT-1 is significantly perturbed during extremely disturbed intervals because of atmospheric density increase. The main contributor to the density increase is Joule heating associated with the geomagnetic activity rather than the solar EUV radiation, as reported by previous studies. We suggest that understanding how the upper atmosphere responses to the geomagnetic-associated heating is important to predict space weather impacts on low earth-orbiting satellites.