South Africa Hell No, They Don't Want to Go

By Bruce W. Nelan/Johannesburg

For years the South African government has been at war with the 900 antidraft activists of the End Conscription Campaign. Defense Minister Magnus Malan calls them "anti-South African." The police have repeatedly raided the campaign's 40 offices and campus branches, and jailed 96 of the group's members without charge. Last week Pretoria fired its latest, and most devastating, salvo. Minister of Law and Order Adriaan Vlok banned the group from "continuing any activities or acts."

The wave of resistance to military service has been rising among white youths since 1985, when the South African Defense Force, 106,000 strong, stepped up its intervention in the Angolan civil war and moved into riot-torn black townships at home. Only a handful of young men out of the annual draft of some 34,000 failed to report for the 1984 call-up, but the following year the number of evaders jumped to more than 1,500. Since then the Defense Ministry has refused to release the statistics.

According to Alastair Teeling-Smith, 26, former national secretary of the End Conscription Campaign, potential draftees accepted the idea of fighting guerrillas in Namibia, "but now they are faced with the prospect of fighting in the townships where their maids and gardeners live, and for many it has become a personal and emotional issue."

Only white men are subject to the two-year draft and the subsequent requirement to serve two months of active duty a year for twelve years. Recently, political resistance to serving the state has become a public issue, especially among English speakers and university students, who are automatically deferred as long as they remain in school. A year ago, 23 new draftees in Cape Town announced to the press that they had refused to serve in the military. One of them, Dr. Ivan Toms, has since been tried and sentenced to 21 months in prison.

South African law recognizes only one plea for draft exemption: religious pacifism. In July a Johannesburg student, David Bruce, 25, took his case to court, becoming the first draftee to argue that he could not enter the army because it upheld an illegal racist system. Bruce was sentenced to six years. Two weeks later, 142 university graduates and students declared that they would refuse to accept induction or, if they had already served their initial two years, to report for further active duty. The End Conscription Campaign, which advocates working in hospitals and performing other types of community service as alternatives to enlisting in the military, did not sponsor the mass act of defiance. Vlok blamed the group anyway. "South Africa's future will be in jeopardy," he said. "This must stop."

At the University of Cape Town the next day, six young men announced they would refuse to serve in the military. An army of 1,500 fellow students showed their support by marching across the campus carrying placards and shouting slogans.