Page 174 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo II

676 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

English and Afrikaans-speaking citizens first alienating the Afrikaner and subsequently the
English-speaking sector from the Defence Force. At the same time ever since the infamous
Land Acts of 1913, the political rights of black people were whittled down until all voting
rights disappeared for black (including Indian and “Coloured”) people by 1959 . in the me-
3
antime black resistance to white rule came around full circle; first violent resistance during
the wars of dispossession, an extensive era of attempted peaceful resistance and eventually
following the Defiance Campaign of 1955, a return to an armed struggle. 4
To say the least; frequently civil military relations in the country remained contentious
– if not strained to the limit. During two hundred years few of the successive governments
in (geographical) South Africa ever used conscription until the 1970s when the apartheid
regime introduced forced military service for white men to bolster the professional military
in order to maintain white power (it has to be noted that forced military service was instituted
in the time of the Dutch East Indian Company and Dutch rule and in the early 1800s the Zulu
King Shaka enforced military service during his expansionist ventures). Between external
deployment and internal activities the South African government depended on a relatively
small but well trained professional military, career soldiers by choice that were supported in
times of crises by volunteer forces if and when so called upon until the 1970s when conscrip-
tion re-emerged.
Military action in the history of South Africa always took place within the structure of a
permanent military core of soldiers and officers (the Permanent Force), voluntary service and
much later through conscription (forced military service, the 1970s – early 1990s). in the
5
case of liberation movements military action was dependent on the loyalists of the liberation
movements that choose to act by carrying arms voluntary.

3 In 1956 Coloured and Asian men lost their voting rights and in 1959 with the Promotion of Bantu Self Go-
vernment Act, Africans lost all franchise rights (White women got the right to vote in the 1930s). See M.
Horrel, Race Relations as Regulated by Law in South Africa, 1948 – 1979 (SAIRR, Cape Town, 1982), p.
3. For the full barrage of apartheid legislation as well as security legislation imposed by the minority state,
consult the same work. The erosion of the powers of the white parliament in a severely restricted democracy,
decline in the rule of law and the ascendancy of security legislation in South Africa is discussed in detail in
J. Dugard, Human Rights and the South African Legal Order (Princeton University Press, new Jersey, 1978)
and A. Mathews, Freedom, State Security and the Rule of Law: Dilemmas of the Apartheid Society (Juta &
Company, Ltd., 1986).
4 i. liebenberg, Ideologie in Konflik (Taurus, Emmerentia/Johannesburg, 1990), pp. 82ff; A. Odendaal, The
Roots of the ANC In I. Liebenberg et al (Eds). The Long March: The Story of the Struggle for Liberation
in South Africa (Pretoria), pp. 1ff. See also G. Houston, The National Liberation Struggle in South Africa:
A case study of the United Democratic Front, 1983 – 1987 (Ashgate Publishers, Aldershot, 1999), p.1 – 2,
22ff.
5 In South African lingua conscription was called national service (Afrikaans: Nasionale Diensplig). National
service was applicable to all white South African males after leaving school (or in the case of tertiary edu-
cation, after leaving college or university). National servicemen, registered at sixteen years of age, also had
annual citizen force duties for another six years before being transferred to the reserve or Kommando’s (local
or territorial defence units). White women were accepted on a voluntary basis for one year to be trained at
George and then deployed in non-combatant positions. The territorial defence units also accepted women
on a voluntary service basis. An infantry battalion (the South African Cape Corps) for so-called “coloured”
people following on a long tradition since Dutch rule was created separately. Black people were accommo-
dated in separate “ethnic battalions”. A system of school cadets prepared (white) secondary school children
for military service through drill exercises, shooting and basic field craft.