SOUTH AFRICA: WHITES WHO WON'T FIGHT
Goodman, David L.
SOUTH AFRICA Whites Who Won't Fight BY DAVID L. GOODMAN The train rolled toward the Botswana border. I shared a compartment with Marc, a white South African teen-ager, and Jim, a white refugee...
...Stop the Call-Up, No War in Namibia, Let Us Choose— banners bearing those slogans covered the walls of a community hall in Cape Town where young white, black, Indian, and "colDavid L. Goodman, a free-lance journalist in Boston, recently returned from four months in southern Africa...
...The Soviet Union Needs You...
...End Conscription...
...During the 1970s, a small but persistent conscientious objector movement took root in South Africa...
...But Ivan Toms has been warned that he may soon have to serve his remaining time in the military or go to prison...
...Conscripts provided crucial support in large-scale raids aimed at intimidating and dividing organized township residents...
...For refusing to serve, he was sentenced to six months in prison but was released after three...
...Forced to regroup, South Africa's antiwar activists decided to launch a nationwide political campaign against conscription...
...The permanent force and the present number of national servicemen are no longer able to guarantee your safety," General Magnus Malan, South African Minister of Defense, warned parliament when the last extension was granted...
...Holiday...
...It was an effort, said ECC Chairman Mike Evans, "to put the issue of compulsory call-up and peace in southern Africa in the public spotlight...
...Are you planning to serve...
...One cannot go into the army and take on the role of soldier and oppressor and then protest the system of white domination' The Campaign's goal is simple: to deny the South African authorities the obedient white soldiers they desperately need...
...Standing in the passageway looking out the window, I watched the last of the spectacular South African landscape go by...
...A friend of mine who was very much against [the Namibia occupation] is now, eight months after entering the SADF, a strong supporter of what's going on," says Ivan Toms...
...he said, and got up and left...
...as air traffic controllers...
...Have you served in the Defense Force already...
...But when they have the vote, gradually we will extend their service too, naturally, as we did with the whites...
...I'm not sure when I'll ever be able to come back...
...More relaxed now, he was willing to open up...
...Up to now," State President P.W...
...Zimbabwe...
...The intention of the South African Defense Force (SADF) is to preserve apartheid at the expense of the majority of South Africa's people...
...He wanted to talk...
...South Africans have a legitimate and incontestable right to refuse to serve in the SADF," asserts the pamphlet...
...Now they don't give the whites no respect, the way the kaffirs down south do...
...And in January, security police raided an ECC conference and announced they were going to bring charges against the activists...
...The ECC is preparing to face a new challenge—the expected extension of compulsory national service to the "colored" and Indian populations...
...Young men are conscripted," the Campaign's October declaration stated, "to maintain the illegal occupation of Namibia, and to wage unjust war against foreign countries [and] to assist in the implementation and defense of apartheid policies...
...Last October, the government dispatched 7,000 troops to quell anti-apartheid protests in black townships...
...Marc belongs to a fledgling antiwar movement among South African whites...
...7,589 did not report Not surprisingly, the state has kept a watchful eye—and an occasional strong arm—on the ECC...
...In response to the conscientious objection movement, parliament amended the Defense Act in 1984 to stipulate that non-pacifist objectors would be subject to a maximum sentence of six years—one-and-a-half times the length of required service...
...In 1983, Peter Hathorn became the first South African to object to military service on strictly political grounds...
...The new Defense Act has forced us to approach war resistance in a different way," says Hathorn...
...My nerves were on edge because I was taking some prohibited material out of the country...
...At the start, only 7,000 men were being drafted each year, but after the launching of Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), the military wing of the banned African National Congress, the government more than doubled the number of draftees...
...A government front group known as the "Moderate Student Alliance" has distributed smear pamphlets against the ECC that were later reprinted in all the major newspapers...
...The campaign appears to be having an impact...
...I was leaving South Africa, having heard quite enough of this kind of talk during my stay there...
...When South African President P.W...
...But as once-progressive whites returned from tours of duty in such places as Namibia, the illusion gradually dissolved...
...After years of debate over the role whites should play in the liberation movement, the ECC has emerged as a way for whites to "work in their own backyard" organizing other whites opposed to the apartheid government...
...All South African men are required to register for military service at age sixteen and are drafted a year later unless they defer to attend college...
...Since October, conscripts have been called in several times to back up the beleaguered Southern African Police...
...movement is no longer viable as a mass movement...
...And in a surprise decision that occasioned a split in party ranks, the opposition Progressive Federal Party called for an end to conscription, though it has declined to endorse the ECC and is often critical of the Campaign...
...In June, the ECC held a three-day "peace festival" attended by 500 delegates from South Africa and the international community...
...A liberal women's organization...
...This compares with 1,596 men who did not report during all of 1984...
...To date, no charges have been filed...
...The SADF is increasingly being used to uphold and implement apartheid policies and repression inside the country," says Toms, a leading organizer of the ECC...
...The early refusers were religious pacifists—in large number, Jehovah's Witnesses—and they received CO...
...In 1977, this time in response to the Soweto uprising the year before, the military doubled the length of required service to two years, to be followed by 240 days of training in the next ten years...
...Despite the repression, the Campaign has no intention of letting up the pressure...
...one of the pamphlets declared...
...With such stiff penalties, the CO...
...He returned shortly after we crossed the border...
...status from the government...
...ECC activists report a "big increase in interest" in the Campaign...
...Black Sash, which provides counseling for black pass-law offenders, catalyzed the growth of the ECC at its 1983 annual conference...
...I asked...
...Well, sort of...
...Jim was going on about how the white Rhodesians would have won the war in the late 1970s if the South African regime had only allowed them to...
...No, I decided to go to university first...
...Several years ago, some progressive white men thought they could work for change from the inside by joining the Defense Force...
...But in 1976, Anton Eber-hardt rejected military service on grounds that the army was not fighting a "just war" based on Christian principles...
...One cannot go into the army and take on the role of soldier and oppressor and then protest about the system of white domination and oppression in this country," Hathorn testified at his trial...
...But it was Marc...
...About 6,000 white men left the country between 1976 and 1980, the ECC says, and they continue to leave at a rate of 2,000 per year...
...South Africa's rulers are used to protest from blacks...
...he was sentenced to one year in prison...
...In the back of the hall, fifteen plain-clothes security police officers toted South African flags and itched for a fight...
...We do not believe that apartheid or white domination is a just cause," a Campaign pamphlet states...
...nursing aides...
...It was the first time in South African history that the army was used to combat domestic dissent...
...Marc, who to my surprise had tried in vain to argue with Jim, came out and stood next to me...
...In the semi-annual call-up last January, for which approximately 15,000 young men were required to report, 7,589 men did not show up...
...If the South African government insists on persecuting these dissidents as well, the civil war in South Africa may take on a whole new dimension...
...Some critics say the tricameral parliament that brought "coloreds" and Indians into the system was nothing more than a gambit to fill the ranks of the Defense Force...
...I'm leaving my country because I don't want to fight in the army," he said...
...Botha declared a state of emergency in July, troops were dispatched to black townships...
...From these premises, the ECC argues against conscription...
...But it was not the last...
...We call for a just peace in our land...
...The blacks, he declared, would have wanted it that way...
...We call for an end to conscription...
...I got up and walked out of the compartment...
...Being in the SADF wears you down, because you have no support mechanism there...
...In December, an off-duty policeman threw a tear-gas bomb into the hall where an ECC benefit concert was taking place...
...Along with the continuing black protests, the anti-conscription movement raises the stakes for the South African government...
...The Objector, the news bulletin of the antiwar movement, quoted from an article in the Cape Times about women in the military...
...My uncle lives there...
...We'll talk later, okay...
...The success reflects a change in consciousness among critics of apartheid...
...Though they are largely ignored by the Western press, the protesters pose a fundamental challenge to the apartheid system...
...The movement has spread quickly in the past year from its base in Cape Town to virtually every major city in South Africa...
...National service was again extended in 1982 when the government mandated two years of follow-up training...
...Since 1980, seventeen other men have gone to prison for resisting on the basis of political or moral objections to the Defense Force and the apartheid system...
...More than 5,000 men have been prosecuted since 1973 for failing to report for military service...
...Such national figures as the Reverend Allan Boesak, Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu, author Nadine Gordimer, South African Council of Churches General Secretary Beyers Naude, and United Democratic Front Co-President Oscar Mpetha also backed the movement...
...It's a beautiful country," he said softly to no one in particular...
...Last January, 15,000 young men were called up for military service...
...They knew that the white man was superior," Jim said...
...I shared a compartment with Marc, a white South African teen-ager, and Jim, a white refugee from Zimbabwe (or Rhodesia, as he still insisted) who was returning home...
...The ECC, a spin-off of the small South African conscientious objector movement, takes an explicitly anti-apartheid position...
...Later in the day, I was startled by a knock on the door of my new compartment...
...There have been other, more aggressive, forms of government harassment...
...While women are not the focus of the ECC's organizing, they have played an important role in the anti-draft movement since its beginnings...
...Botha said in 1983, "we did not bring this matter forward because we did not have the accommodation, we did not have the financial capability, and we had to be satisfied with the voluntary service they have rendered...
...Marc became agitated...
...Where are you headed...
...Ivan Toms, a physician at the Crossroads squatter camp outside Cape Town, refuses to complete the second term of his national service...
...The African National Congress, the leading liberation organization, has lent public support to the ECC...
...It quickly won the support of diverse organizations around the country: the National Union of South African Students, the Congress of South African Students, committees of the United Democratic Front, the South African Council of Churches, and the Quakers...
...But civil disobedience from within the white community is something new...
...Women could play crucial roles," the story noted, "in community improvement projects (civil action...
...ored" (mixed race) South Africans had come to launch the End Conscription Campaign (ECC) last October...
...And the men and women spearheading the campaign are attempting to reach out to South African women by emphasizing the role that women will be asked to take on as the civil war in South Africa intensifies...
...radar operators and pilots of light aircraft, and release a lot of men from administrative work for fighting...
...Conscription began in 1961 in response to growing black resistance, epitomized by the Sharpeville massacre of 1960...
Vol. 49 • September 1985 • No. 9
