Page 161 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo II

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aCta
vements, either organised or unorganised, perhaps the most impressive example of the latter
being the resistance of Soviet conscripts after the occupation of Afghanistan following the
invasion of December 1979.

background
I shall use April 1974 as the point of departure for this narrative. Prior to the military coup
or the ‘carnation revolution’, apartheid South Africa had been relatively secure in geo-stra-
tegic terms, protected from the forces of black-majority rule in the north by the settler-ruled
country of Rhodesia, and the colonies of Angola, Mozambique and Namibia (which was in
effect a South African colony). April 1974 changed all that. Very quickly, the ‘cordon sani-
taire’ was lost, as Mozambique and Angola teetered towards independence and new fronts in
the armed liberation struggle were opened on the borders of Zimbabwe, Namibia and South
Africa itself. A little over two years later, the crisis facing the apartheid regime was com-
pounded by the black uprisings which began in Soweto in June 1976, led by schoolchildren,
and rapidly engulfed large parts of mainly urban South Africa in a cycle of protest and violent
repression (Cawthra 1986: 23-25).
These two events had an immediate effect on the burden of conscription for white males.
Prior to 1994 conscription had been something of a fun right of passage for white men: at
around 18 years old (sometimes earlier) they were obliged to perform military service for ni-
ne months (rising to 12 months 1972). The only ones who refused were Jehovah’s Witnesses,
who as is commonly known try not to ‘render unto Caesar’ in any capacity. Following the
‘carnation revolution’, in 1975 three-month operational tours of duty were introduced: South
Africa invaded Angola that year while fighters from the South-West Africa People’s Organi-
sation (SWAPO) used post-colonial Angola as a base for operations in Namibia. For the first
time, combat was on the cards. Then, in 1977 after the Soweto uprisings, the initial period of
military service was increased to 24 months, followed by part-time (often operational) pe-
riods of 30 days a year for eight years (IDAF 1980:35). Later, the burden was increased ever
further, so that the one million or white males aged between 18-45 (about one out of 30 of the
population) faced almost a lifetime of intermittent military service (CIIR 1989: 61).
This new intensity of conscription quickly had effects, as conscripts and deserters began
to go into exile. The most common routes were international flights to London in the UK,
followed by Amsterdam in the Netherlands and California or New York in the USA, althou-
gh others (often deserters) illegally crossed to neighbouring countries – most commonly
Botswana. It would be a while before conscientious objectors would be prepared to take a
stand inside South Africa and face the penalties involved, which by the mid-1980s involved
six years imprisonment.

the earLy exiLes 3
The mid-1970s was a period of ferment in South African anti-apartheid and revolutionary
politics. The oldest liberation movement, the African National Congress (ANC), had suffered

3 Much of this section is publically undocumented and is based on the author’s personal experience and minu-
tes of COSAWR.