Posted on November 18, 2011
The three books reviewed alongside this story concern the experiences of young men who did their compulsory service in the South African Defence Force. According to Gary Baines, 'between 1967 and 1994 approximately 300 000 young white males were conscripted by the SADF ('Coming to Terms with the Border War in Post-Apartheid South Africa', 2008). As demonstrated by the selection of books reviewed, attempts to fill in the gaps in our collective memory of the past have focused on hearing the voices of those who served but whose experiences of trauma do not fit into the conventional nationalist narrative of a heroic struggle against apartheid. But what about those who did not serve, those who evaded conscription not to join the underground, but objected to conscription nonetheless? How should we think about them? Here is one story of a conscription evader to further complicate our picture of who the heroes and villains were.
Joao (not his real name) started getting his call-up in 1978. Like every other young white man, at 16 he was supposed to go and train for two years and then be available for deployment whenever needed. Most of Joao's peers considered spending two years in the army a nuisance, but went anyway. He insists that his political consciousness was not developed, but that he knew he could never serve in the SADF. He says, "I had always known I was not going to go to the army. I had grown up on a farm and was aware that apartheid was about inequality. I didn't feel like I fitted in with white South Africa, and I didn't feel like I'd be accepted into black South Africa. I felt like I needed to go to some cosmopolitan place".
He had also grown up with a glaring contradiction. On the one hand, his mother was a staunch supporter of 'our boys on the border'. Having married a Portuguese immigrant, she had supported Portuguese troops conscripted for four years to fight against the Frente de Libertas de Moçambique (FRELIMO). When Mozambique won its independence, she had switched her allegiance to South African conscripts. On the other hand, he went to a liberal school where things like racism were discussed. The school would arrange social nights for its students with students from schools in the townships of Inanda and Intshanga near Durban. At 15 he even found himself attending a political meeting in response to a death in detention.
So, when his call-up came, he first dodged it legally by going to university in Cape Town. But, he says, 'I knew I wasn't going to go'. The university days came and went, in which time he became a popular club dj and even co-founded a club called Scratch. The club ran from 1979 until its owners were intimidated and brutalised by the police into shutting it down in 1982. It was a hub of counter-culture and racial mixing. He says, 'The law didn't say you couldn't socialise; it said you couldn't drink together [across racial lines]. We rejected alcohol as part of the macho militaristic culture of apartheid, We were ganja smokers '. By the time the club was forced to close, Joao had left Cape Town for Johannesburg to earn money to leave the country. In order to continue avoiding the army, he had registered as a postgraduate student with no intention of studying. He simply registered and left for Johannesburg. And so on 1 May 1983 he eventually left.
His mother was shattered by his son's betrayal. After her death Joao would find a copy of a letter she had written to her friends in the military. In it she explained that she did not support his decision, he was off to study abroad, and she would see to it that he did his duty when he came back.
His first stop? New York City for almost 7 months. And they were 7 brutal months. A friend who had moved to New York to try and make it as a filmmaker put him up. Once he had overstayed his tourist visa and was unemployable, it was down to eking out a meagre living. He did all sorts of odd jobs: selling second-hand clothes and incense made by a friend on the streets of the city, handing out flyers in the freezing cold, and such. The friend's contacts in the club world helped somewhat. With his friend he did some work in a club called the Pyramid - creating an installation in the club once, and occassionally dj-ing or working in the coatcheck on nights when it was so cold that the regular dj or coat attendants didn't want to go to work. It was a precarious life: no prospects of going anywhere else, and no means to do anything. Being white and South African during the Cultural Boycott was particularly tough. He once got close to landing a job in a club. The dj had left, the club played the kind music he knew best - reggae, and the owner was heading towards giving him an audition. But when it came out that he was South African, that was the end of the conversation. His experience in New York destroyed his self-confidence and, he says, it has taken him close to 30 years for it to return to the level it had reached when he was a popular dj. Close to rock bottom and reduced to wearing rags that people were throwing away to keep the winter cold out, Joao got a call: a Mr Silva was waiting in a hotel uptown with a passport and some money. Mr Silva turned out to the Joao's own father who had tricked him into a meeting. He would not have gone otherwise; he was too angry with his father for not supporting his decision to leave.
The passport was Portuguese. (Joao's father was Portuguese with permanent residence in South Africa.) And so it was on to his next stop - Lisbon. It was meant to be a more comfortable life - living with an uncle who had left Mozambique at independence, attending Portuguese lessons and figuring out what to do in life. It turned out to be the most alienating and depressing 11 months of his life. He even came close to suicide. It was winter. He didn't know the European culture of hibernating in the winter. He went looking for the youth, but there was no youth to be found anywhere. He hated his classes, finding Portuguese was a sexist language with its masculine and feminine forms. He was mocked everywhere for being a Portuguese who could not speak Portuguese. His saving grace was meeting Africans from Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau whose famlies had emigrated to Portugal after independence in those countries. He finally began to understand what was really happening on in South Africa. But he was soon to be on the move again.
The next destination? Harare, Zimbabwe. An offer of a teaching job was secured through friends in Zimbabwe. Off to Harare he went. Once there he discovered that the school principal who had made the offer did not have the authority to do so. He appealed and appealed, going to the Education department daily. While security checks were being conducted on him, he disclosed his mother's activities. That was it: no job, 24 hours to get out! Insult added to the bruising negotiation he had had to conduct with his family who couldn't understand why he wanted to 'go to Mugabe' when they had rescued him from New York. With a few Zim dollars and a few rands in his pocket, he and his girlfriend, who had gone to join him in Harare from South Africa, walked and hitchhiked back to South Africa.
At Beit Bridge what he had feared all through his exile seemed to finally catch up with him. He and his girlfriend were taken to Musina for questioning. He had always feared that the moment he set foot in South Africa he would be identified as an army dodger and sent to prison for up to six years as was being done at the time. His reggae tapes and records with words like 'freedom' and 'liberation' in their titles as well as Radio Freedom stickers on them had aroused suspicion. Fortunately the interrogator soon realised that he wasn't carrying any messages from 'the terrorists' and let him go. And so it was on to trying to lie low. The dilemma was always whether to get involved in the End Conscription Campaign and such support structures that had been formed while he was away or to not draw any attention to himself lest he be found out. But the line was drawn in the sand when the Conservative Party became the official opposition in 1987. He could no longer sit on the fence. He joined the United Democratic Front (UDF) and became active making posters and pamphlets, picketing, and attending weekly organisation meetings.
And what was the cost of all this? His mother never forgave him until she died. He feels his sister betrayed him too. He took her into his confidence when he was involved in the UDF to let her know what he was doing. At a time when the police were arresting almost anybody they suspected of involvement in the UDF, he thought to let someone in his family know that if he got arrested, they were not to worry because the UDF had many lawyers who could get him out. His sister went and called a family meeting. The outcome was a threat to withhold his inheritance from his grandmother lest he give it to the 'terrorists'. The family has never spoken about his army dodging. It's a disavowed aspect of its past.
Of people who went to the army he says, 'I find it hard not to judge people who went to the army. I am close to some people who went. Some people went and I thought, 'I'm never talking to you again' because they justified it. Sometimes I meet people, I work with them and then I find out about this. It's hard... I particularly can't accept the argument, 'I had no choice'.' To this day he bears emotional scars: 'It scars you on many levels. Paranoia for instance. In the organisation [I run], I put uneccessarily elaborate procedures in place to vet people's intentions... You had spies among you [in the UDF], but you never knew who they were. To this day there are people I think, 'Was it you?''
Mbongiseni Buthelezi is the Archival Platform Ancestral Stories Coordinator.
