TRC Final Report

Volume 5

Chapter 6

Subsection 33

Conscription

THE COMMISSION FINDS THAT:

THE STATE’S POLICY OF CONSCRIPTION WAS IMMORAL AND DENIED CONSCRIPTS THE RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE AND THE RIGHT TO REFUSE TO SERVE IN THE SADF.

THROUGH THE POLICY OF CONSCRIPTION, THE STATE AND THE SADF USED YOUNG MEN TO ASSIST, IMPLEMENT AND DEFEND THE POLICY OF APARTHEID, TO MAINTAIN THE ILLEGAL OCCUPATION OF NAMIBIA AND TO WAGE WAR AGAINST NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES.

THE STATE’S VILIFICATION OF CONSCRIPTS WHO REFUSED TO SERVE IN THE SADF BY LABELLING THEM “COWARDS AND TRAITORS” CONSTITUTES A VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS.

SOME CHURCHES (IN PARTICULAR MAINSTREAM AFRIKAANS CHURCHES) OPENLY SUPPORTED THE POLICY OF CONSCRIPTION, THUS CREATING A CLIMATE IN WHICH GROSS VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS COULD TAKE PLACE.

■ CONCLUSION

162 The findings outlined above, to a greater or lesser extent, touch all the major role-players who were party to the conflict that enveloped South Africa during its mandate period. No major role-player emerges unscathed although, as already stated, a distinction must be made between those who fought for and those who fought against apartheid. There are many who will reject these findings and argue that they fail to understand the complexities and historical realities of the time, and of the motives and perspectives of those who perpetrated gross violations of human rights. In this regard it needs to be firmly stated that, while the Commission has attempted to convey some of these complexities and has grappled with the motives and perspectives of perpetrators in other sections of this report, it is not the Commission’s task to write the history of this country. Rather, it is the Commission’s function to expose the violations of all parties in an attempt to lay the basis for a culture in which human rights are respected and not violated.

163 It should also be noted – as will be obvious from the content above – that the Commission’s findings have focused mainly on events and violations that occurred inside South Africa in the 1960–94 period. There are obvious and good reasons for that, but it represents something of a historical distortion. It is the view of the Commission that, in terms of the gross violations of human rights, most of these occurred not internally, but beyond the borders of South Africa, in some of the poorest nations of the world. It was the residents of the Southern African region who bore the brunt of the South African conflict and suffered the greatest number of individual casualties and the greatest damage to their countries’ economies and infrastructure.

164 Finally, in the context of a society moving towards reconciliation, South Africans need to acknowledge this country’s divided history and its regional burden; to understand the processes whereby all, citizens included, were drawn in and are implicated in the fabric of human rights abuse, both as victims and perpetrators – at times as both.

165 The primary task of the Commission was to address the moral, political and legal consequences of the apartheid years. The socio-economic implications are left to other structures – the Land Commission, the Gender Commission, the Youth Commission and a range of reform processes in education, social welfare, health care, housing and job creation. Ultimately, however, because the work of the Commission includes reconciliation, it needs to unleash a process that contributes to economic developments that redress past wrongs as a basis for promoting lasting reconciliation. This requires all those who benefited from apartheid, not only those whom the Act defines as perpetrators, to commit themselves to the reconciliation process.