It is argued that this response was premised on the assumption that African liberation movements were manipulated by the Soviet Union and its Cuban proxies in Southern Africa. The article sets out to review publications that have appeared since the late 1980s dealing with the border war in Namibia, the perceived 'total onslaught' against the NP-government of South Africa and its response in the shape of a 'total strategy' to combat the forces of revolutionary communism. This has direct consequences for the development of research and scholarship on this topic. The overwhelming majority of South Africans are consequently not exposed to a formal education on the history of the liberation struggle beyond what they get at school.
The result is that such departments have made themselves irrelevant by failing to include history that is relevant to the majority of students. The second hypothesis explored is: While the history of the liberation struggle constitutes an important element of the country's history, very little attention is given to this topic in the curricula of relevant university departments. The first hypothesis explored here is: While the history of the liberation struggle has received increasing attention in the history curriculum at school level and there has been a corresponding increase in the number of high school students taking history as a subject of study, this has not led to a significant increase in numbers of history students at the tertiary level. The second theme focuses on the state of the study of the history of the liberation struggle. Although there are various reasons for the relatively poor research capacity and achievements in this area, including underfunding of research, South African academics are in some ways responsible for this situation. The hypothesis explored here is: While there has been a significant explosion in research on the history of the liberation struggle by South African scholars since 1990, a large proportion of research outputs on the history of the liberation struggle is being produced by non-South Africans. The focus is on relevant publications by South African and non-South African academics. The first explores the state of research on the history of the South African liberation struggle.
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