– for refusing to serve in the South African Defence Force. In summing up, Magistrate AP Kotze said Toms was "not a menace to society. You are the opposite, an asset. It is sad that you went so far to insist on the stand you took." Kotze told Toms he had the power to terminate his own imprisonment and said he hoped sincerely that he would.
During evidence in mitigation, Pastor Oswald Shivuti, secretary of the Owamboland legislative assembly, told the court he had in six years received 632 complaints of SADF mistreatment of civilians. Referring to this, Kotze said: "I am sure there is substance in the evidence of Mr Shivuti regarding atrocities. If what he says is true, there is more need for you on the border than in Crossroads."
Toms is the first person to be tried for refusing to serve in the SADF since legislation in 1983 provided tor a Religious Board of Objection. Earlier Toms, 35, had told the Wynberg Regional Court that he was making "the one choice I have as a white South African". In South Africa, life was "full of compromises", he said. He paid tax which helped to prop up apartheid and he lived in a white group area. "But I can choose to go to prison rather than serve in the SADF," he said. "I hope that I, and the others who follow me, might in some small way pressurise the government to change the law and provide real alternatives for objectors."
Toms had pleaded not guilty to a charge of failing to render service at 3 Medical Battalion Group, Goodwood, in November last year. Called as the first witness in mitigation, Toms told the court he had entered the SADF for his compulsory two year's national service in 1978 "confused andunhappy but feeling that I had little choice". A committed Christian, he had non-combatant status and was a full lieutenant In Namibia, he had refused to carry a weapon, but still felt he was "a cog in the military machine". On completion of his two years, he set up the Empilisweni clinic in Crossroads, and was for some time the only doctor serving a community of some 30 000 people.
Toms said his experiences there had crystallised his political views. "Up to that point I had an intellectual problem with not going to the army. But now I saw the realities of apartheid, under which black people were treated like animals." Toms did not apply to the Religious Board of Objection. "You cannot separate, as the board does, religious from ethical and political objectors," he said Toms said the board's "alternative" service was punitive. A first-time objector faced six years service in government departments, "which means you are still party to apartheid's implementation". "I don't want to be excused because I am a Christian, I want to be identified with the many who do not qualify," Toms said.
The Right Rev David Russel, Anglican Bishop of Cape Town, told the court there was a "profound theological confusion" in the Defence Act on the question of religious objection. It ruled out most Christians, 99 percent of whom would not describe themselves as universal pacifists, who were unwilling to fight under any circumstances. Toms was obeying his Bible and his church by helping to train primary health-care workers in black townships, Russel said.
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
