Hoe de hel durf ons vertel? Oorlogsliteratuur, Christendom en persoonlike geskiedenis

Abstract

How the hell dare we tell? War literature, Christianity and personal history

This article looks into aspects of the experience of the South African Border War during the seventies and the eighties. The very fact that there was a war was denied at some stages; often it was presented as a 'battle between the powers of light and the powers of darkness ’. Almost always this war was underestimated in terms of its influence on the lives of common people. A vast corpus of ‘Border literature’ has developed and three of these narrative texts are used as the basis for a personal account of experiences as a National Service chaplain during the war. The relevant narrative texts are ’n Wêreld sonder grense (A world without borders) by Alexander Strachan, Wie de hel het jou vertel? (Who the hell told you?) and Swart sendelinge (Black missionaries) by Gawie Kellerman.