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You’re reading too much into it… that there were many South African mercenaries is a historical fact, they’re not stereotyping any population in that sentence.
by schrijver 5y ago
You’re reading too much into it… that there were many South African mercenaries is a historical fact, they’re not stereotyping any population in that sentence.
For what it’s worth, in the popular consciousness outside of SA, the white South African as a bogeyman probably peaked a long time ago, I would say around 1989 — when Lethal Weapon 2 was released with South Africans as the bad guys.
- panzagl 5y agoI guess you could nitpick as to how many of them were from Rhodesia instead of South Africa proper. But South Africans have certainly made a cottage industry out of bush war memoirs, so it's hard to be too nitpicky.
- hedgehog 5y agoThere's some basis. Executive Outcomes was in its day one of the premier private military contractors and formed largely out of outgoing military who served the regime. Any time a big organization gets downsized those people need to find jobs, at the same time there's a robust market for arms-length labor to take on dangerous and politically risky work. The US has probably been #1 for the last 20 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Outcomes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Outcomes