The South African Infantry Corps is the largest combat corps within the South African Army.
The unit originated as the Infantry Branch of the Union Defence Forces in 1913.
In 1915, the defence forces established the South African Overseas Expeditionary Force for war service outside southern Africa. It included the South African Infantry, comprising twelve battalions, and the Cape Corps, comprising two battalions of Coloured volunteers. These units were disbanded in 1919.
The Infantry Branch was enlarged in 1934, and the mounted rifles regiments were converted to infantry in 1935.
In 1943, the Infantry Branch was incorporated into the new South African Armoured Corps, which was divided into armour and infantry branches after World War II. In 1954, the SAAC's infantry branch, and the personnel of the South African Instructional Corps, were formed into the South African Infantry Corps.
In 2000 the Corps became known as the Army Infantry Formation.
Read more about South African Infantry Corps: Units, Alliances
Famous quotes containing the words south, african and/or corps:
“Biography is a very definite region bounded on the north by history, on the south by fiction, on the east by obituary, and on the west by tedium.”
—Philip Guedalla (1889–1944)
“Exploitation and oppression is not a matter of race. It is the system, the apparatus of world-wide brigandage called imperialism, which made the Powers behave the way they did. I have no illusions on this score, nor do I believe that any Asian nation or African nation, in the same state of dominance, and with the same system of colonial profit-amassing and plunder, would have behaved otherwise.”
—Han Suyin (b. 1917)
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)