The War and Society in Africa conference series is a unique event framed to explore facets of the multifarious and reciprocal impacts between the phenomenon of war and African society. Spearheaded by Prof Ian van der Waag, five conferences have been convened at the Faculty of Military Science, sometimes in partnership, between 2000 and 2006.

Series	Date	Theme
1st Conference	4-6 Sep 2000	South Africa at War in the Twentieth Century
2nd Conference	12-14 Sep 2001	African Warfare
3rd Conference	16 Sep 2002	Siege Warfare in southern Africa (co-hosted with the University of Warwick)
4th Conference	4-6 Sep 2003	Strategy, Generalship & Command in Southern Africa: past, present, future (co-hosted with the African War Studies Network)
5th Conference	13-15 Sep 2006	The Second World War, Armed Forces and Southern African Society, from 1939 to the present

These conferences fulfilled several functions at a critical time in the history of this institution. Scholars, expert in their field, were drawn to the Military Academy. Our students were exposed to a range of different voices. And, collaborative work and several publications, chiefly as special issues of Scientia Militaria; South African Journal of Military Studies, were generated.

The Turner Lectures

Moreover, the conference coincided with the presentation of the Turner Lecture, an annual lecture in the field of military history or military and security theory, presented by a distinguished academic of international standing and arranged by the Department of Military History, Stellenbosch University (South African Military Academy). Instituted with effect from 1 July 2000, the lecture series was named for Major L.C.F. Turner, who holds a central seat in the pantheon of South African military historians. Turner was a prolific writer and, as member of the Union War Histories Section, contributed to what is arguably the best South African official history: namely, Crisis in the Desert (1952), The Sidi Rezeg Battles, 1941 (1957) and War in the Southern Oceans (1961), as well as numerous UWH manuscripts. A student of the Napoleonic era, he obtained an M.A. (History) from the University of the Witwatersrand with a dissertation on The Cape of Good Hope and the Trafalgar Campaign in 1938. He was the first Military History lecturer at the South African Military Academy, albeit in a part-time capacity, and supervised the establishment of the present Military History Department.

Turner Lecturers

2000
Professor Jeffrey Grey:
University College, Australian Defence Force Academy & Horner Professor of Military Theory, US Marine Corps University, Quantico
Military Education and the Study of War

2001
Professor Bill Nasson:
University of Cape Town
Battling for History; The Impact of War upon Modern South Africa

2002
Thomas Pakenham [Lord Longford]:
Historian and writer
The three major sieges of the South African War (1899-1902) from a British military viewpoint

2003
Dr Kent Fedorowich:
Reader in Imperial and Commonwealth History, University of the West of England, Bristol
German espionage and British counter-intelligence in South Africa and Mozambique, 1939-44

2006
Brigadier General McGill Alexander:
Director Combined Doctrine, SA National Defence Force
South Africa: the Forgotten Pioneer in Vertical Envelopment during the Second World War

2007
Ambassador David Shinn:
Adjunct Professor of in the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, and former US Ambassador to Ethiopia
Africa-China relations at the turn of the 21st century



Dr Kent Fedorowich (UWE) and Dr Andrew Stewart (King’s College, London) take a break from the Second World War to consider the processes and products of the South African wine industry, 2006. Dr Fedorowich gave the fourth Turner Lecture.