ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the attitudes and voting behaviours of veterans of the Second World War. It explores how they shaped the post-war sociopolitical construct in South Africa. At first glance, the suggestion that South African veterans voted for the Nationalists in 1948 does not seem convincing. The political preferences of ordinary white South African citizen soldiers clearly resonated, to a significant degree, with the policies of the Herenigde Nasionale Party (HNP). It is difficult to disassociate the issue of the race and dynamics from the direction South African politics took post 1948. Veterans form distinct cohorts in post-war polities, and as such, they warrant attention as discreet historical actors. Albert Grundlingh has certainly intimated that Afrikaner veterans voted for the HNP. The system of apartheid institutionalized racial segregation and discrimination in South Africa until its demise in 1991. The conditions for institutionalized apartheid in South Africa had been substantially shaped by the soldiers' experience of the war.
