Defunct political organisations don’t get to celebrate anniversaries. Usually, they just fade away (and sometimes are remembered with a hint of embarrassment).
But the End Conscription Campaign (ECC) is different. The 25th anniversary of its launch has prompted a wave of unrestrained delight, an outpouring of fond memories — reunions, celebrations, Facebook and Google groups —
It helped that we bowed out with heads held high, having achieved our goal, but the ECC was also such a wonderfully vibrant and inclusive movement. Its single-issue focus made for clarity and simplicity and the kinds of people it attracted helped to spark an energy and creativity that other organisations envied.
It all started in the late 1970s when four young men publicly refused to obey their call-ups and were sentenced to spells of up to 18 months in jail. This gave momentum to the objector movement and by 1983, 13 objectors had been jailed (by then, all white males faced two years of compulsory military service plus two years of camps).
Their stand formed the basis of high-profile campus protests and some of the activists joined forces with pacifist Christians in the Conscientious Objector Support Group (COSG) and promoted the idea of a wider anti-military campaign.
The PW Botha government responded by increasing the period of imprisonment from two to six years for refusing military service. But instead of stamping out a growing irritant, this move had the opposite effect.
It was decided that the ideal way to draw the broadest support was to campaign for a change in the law. The ECC was formed at the COSG conference in October 1983 and after a year of branch-building it was publicly launched. Initially, it was an umbrella structure backed by 50 affiliate organisations but it quickly developed its own character.
A question that often arises is what part the ANC played in all this. The short answer is that it did its bit to spur it on, but once the ECC was established the ANC played virtually no role at all. It would receive reports on our activities, but had little role in influencing strategy and would endorse whatever we tried.
I remember only one exception when some ANC notables objected to the presence of the poet Breyten Breytenbach on an ECC platform (for reasons related to disputes in Pretoria Central prison). Some ECC leaders succumbed to this pressure — prompting justified outrage from Afrikaner members.
More generally, the ECC avoided crippling theoretical debates and factional disputes. It rapidly grew by campaigning against the conscription laws, the war in Angola, the troops in the townships and for voluntary forms of alternative service, setting up 13 branches around the country.
It attracted a significant number of Afrikaners, with the English-speaking Christians, liberals and leftists, artists and musicians, and was one of the few anti-apartheid organisations to be gay-friendly. At its height, it probably had no more than 1 000 activists, but these were reinforced by thousands more from its affiliates, whereas its support base was much bigger.
Its message seemed to capture the attention of conscripts and the ”conscripted community” (parents, sisters, girlfriends). A few examples: a poster of a broken conscript saying ”Botha ek’s gatvol” (Botha I’ve had enough). Another was aimed at schools saying ”Mannetjie — didn’t they tell you? Cadets maak malletjies”. A widely distributed music album, Forces Favourites, still sounds fresh and funky today. A booklet aimed at troops — adorned with a cartoon of a young man on his way to the army hugging his girl. He asks: ”What’s this little present you’re giving me?” She replies: ”It’s a booklet called Know Your Rights in the SADF.”
With all the posters, stickers, banners and T-shirts there were cabarets and concerts, poems and short stories, plays and songs, fairs and beach parties, with regions competing against one another to be the most innovative. The ECC came to be seen as trendy — even sexy.
The high point came between 1984 and 1986. Its Troops Out of the Township campaign, spearheaded by a three-week fast by three ECC activists, attracted thousands to its rallies, and its publicity material, including posters with slogans like ”Wat soek jy in die townships troepie?” (What are you doing in the townships soldier?), clearly had an impact.
In 1985 it was announced in Parliament that 7589 conscripts had failed to report for the January national call-up, compared with 1596 for the whole of 1984. By then about 7 000 war resisters were living in Europe, but many others simply dodged the call-up by evading the military police, or prolonged their studies indefinitely.
Until then the state had responded with a mixture of misplaced propaganda and attempts at disrupting ECC activities, while trying to flood the organisation with informers. But once the state of emergency was declared in 1986, repression became more virulent.
The then defence minister, Magnus Malan, set the tone: ”The End Conscription Campaign is a direct enemy of the SADF [South African Defence Force]. It’s disgraceful that the SADF, but especially the country’s young people, the pride of the nation, should be subjected to the ECC’s propaganda, suspicion-sowing and misinformation.” To which the army’s major general, Jan van Loggerenberg, added: ”The ECC has only one aim in mind and that is to break our morale and to eventually leave South Africa defenceless.”
More than 100 of us were detained for anything from a day to a year and many went into hiding. Offices and homes were tear-gassed and firebombed, members’ cars and motorbikes had their brake cables cut, wheel nuts loosened and tyres overinflated; others were beaten up and, later, a few of us were targeted for assassination.
The ECC was banned under the emergency regulations in 1988 and some of its members served with restriction orders, with the then law and order minister, Adriaan Vlok, declaring that the ECC was part of the ”revolutionary onslaught against South Africa”.
This prompted a new and even more potent form of resistance. In 1987 a group of 23 Cape-based conscripts publicly refused to obey their call-ups, beginning a new thrust that challenged state power directly.
In 1988 the movement went national with 143 signing up and in 1989 the number had risen to 771, several of them SADF officers. The register of objectors soon passed the 1 000 mark — far too many for the state to charge (although three objectors were jailed during this period).
In 1989 in response to a national defiance campaign the ECC ”unbanned” itself and resumed business. Soon after conscription, was cut from two years to one and after 1990 it was effectively phased out, officially ending in 1993.
An obvious question remains: what role, if any, did the ECC play in bringing down apartheid?
I believe that it put pressure on the conscription system and in the end made it impossible for the state to enforce.
In addition it helped foment divisions in the broader white community. Its mere existence so exasperated the state that millions of rands were diverted in a bid to snuff it out.
On a more personal note: today, 25 years after its public launch, most of us former ECC stalwarts are in our 40s or 50s, with children of our own, some the same age as we were back then.
No doubt many of us no longer hold to all our old beliefs and look back with some misgivings on aspects of our political pasts. But the ECC remains an exception. I guess we all still hold a candle for it, remembering it with pride — as something good we created when we were at our best.
Gavin Evans was the End Conscription Campaign’s Johannesburg publicity secretary and a former Mail & Guardian reporter