The South African Legion to commemorate centenary

The SA Legion will be returning to its roots when commemorating its centenary this weekend (15 to 17 October). The event commemorates the worldwide meeting of countries in 1921 of military veterans from around the world.

It will close with a memorial service on Sunday.

This is not only the South African Legion’s 100 years, but also the centenary for many Commonwealth veterans' organisations including the Royal British Legion, the Returned and Services League of Australia, and groups as far flung as the Bermuda Legion and the British Legion Kenya.

The first South African organisations founded to care for servicemen (and later -women) were the Comrades of the Great War and the League of Returned Sailors and Soldiers.

Following the end of the First World War in 1918, there were numerous initiatives to unite all veterans of the British Empire.

The first international conference of British veterans’ organisations, to be called the British Empire Services League (BESL), was held in the Cape Town City Hall from 28 February to 4 March 1921 and was chaired by leading statesmen and generals.

Representatives from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the then-Rhodesia, and Great Britain participated.

General Sir Henry Lukin, a South African with command experience in the war, was elected as the BESL’s first president.

The BESL is now known as the Royal Commonwealth Exservices League (RECL), of which the SA Legion remains a member.

The central idea, encapsulated in the motto, 'Not for ourselves, but for others', has not changed.

A central mission of the SA Legion has always been in providing care, housing and employment to military veterans. A well-known example is the SA Legion Memorial Chapel and Social Club in Dube, Soweto, run by the Soweto branch.

The Legion operates service centres for the aged in Rosebank and Benoni in Gauteng, Bloemfontein in the Free State, in Durban and Pietermaritzburg in KZN and in Cape Town, among others.

With the founding of the Department of Military Veterans (DMV) in 2009 as part of the Department of Defence (DoD), veterans’ affairs changed with an increase in centralisation under the department, and therefore a greater government involvement in veterans' affairs.

All veterans now have to register with the DMV to be eligible for benefits.

It was in this context that the Legion, true to its non-political, non-partisan calling, stood up for veterans as it had in previous times when the DMV in 2011 tried to deny benefits to soldiers who served in the Border Conflict (1964-1988).

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Key events in South Africa’s military history are regularly commemorated by the Legion, the best-known being Remembrance Day on 11 November, which is regularly televised and covered by local and national media.

The organisation, in its striving for unity and fair and equal treatment of all veterans, received recognition from Nelson Mandela who, as Patron-in-Chief of the Legion, told the assembled South African and Commonwealth veterans at the British Commonwealth Ex-services League’s 75th Anniversary in Cape Town in 1996, 'The South African Legion’s acceptance of Umkhonto we Sizwe and APLA (Azanian People's Liberation Army) veterans as members, puts the organisation at the heart of reconciliation which is feeding the new patriotism of the new South Africa.'