Season 1. Episode 1. Joan Wardrop: The Soweto Flying Squad

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Preferred Title

Joan Wardrop: The Soweto Flying Squad

Interviewee

Joan Wardrop

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Description

Episode 1 explores the Soweto Flying Squad, a frontline mobile force of armed policemen in the South West Townships on the outskirts of Johannesburg. From 1994 to 1998 Joan rode with the Soweto Flying Squad and completed 200 shifts observing the activity of Soweto after dark. Soweto was a defiant place, still transitioning from apartheid to freedom; Joan reveals its dark and dangerous sides while showing the human reality of the area and the policemen with whom she observed and built lasting connections.

Interviewee Bio

Joan Wardrop, Adjunct Professor at the University of Notre Dame, Fremantle, trained as a medieval historian (UWA and Oxford) but became more interested in modern history, undertaking some oral history and discovering Southern African history and politics, and its similarity with Australian experience. Her interests then turned to ethnography, and has gradually returned to European history, rereading it in light of her ethnographic studies.

Narrator

Catherine Vann

Interviewer

Mignon Shardlow

Date Created

1-9-2018

Keywords

Soweto, Flying Squad, Apartheid

Disciplines

History

Length of Episode

21.54

School

School of Arts & Sciences

Season 1. Episode 1. Joan Wardrop: The Soweto Flying Squad

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