Special Hearings — Conscription Hearings — 1997-07-23

PROF SEEGERS: Good morning, thank you very much.
 I think we have about 10 or so minutes left on my calculation so I will confine myself to that time period.  Like Jannie I mean I am interested in the empirical side first and like him I am quite concerned that if I draw any conclusions, particularly about what people thought I am perhaps even more cautious than he is in trying to find out what people think now or what people thought at that time.  But I do believe that the starting place for researchers into, among other things, conscription now, should start with the empirical side, so solid figures.
 In that regard the TRC has requested the SANDF nodal point to provide us with figures and we've not, I believe, received a response yet, so the figures that I am going to mention today I speak under correction.  But until the nodal point gets back to us these, in my mind at least, stand.
 I'd like to make about three or four points that I believe my research supports.  I have not used other surveys and the like that Jannie makes.  I think that in the first instance I think, not to belabour it, I think there's an analytical point that one has to make about conscription and that is that when you do research about it you are compelled to make a least a threefold distinction, in other words what happens to people at the point of entry into national service.  What has happened to them already?  And that would be suggested by the low rate of, it's very difficult to find evasion to national service, and that's not only for us.  People don't reveal the reasons often why they do them, they are not given the opportunity to do that.  But that's the first point.  What has happened to people at the point of entry?  What has already happened to them.
 I think three elements here are important.  I think in the first instance, and I think supported by Jannie's evidence is this attitude of parents are very, very critical, but not only parents but where the rest of your family is.  What have your brothers done?  What do your sisters think, and what does the rest of the family?  And what has happened to them. And is somebody already doing something like this.
 The second element that's important there is of course the high school, what has happened in the high school.  Are you already doing national service by imitation, and I am referring to the cadet corp that was in operation, has been part of the South African Defence Act since 1912.  And I think thirdly your employers, because I want to get back to that.
 So I think the first analytical point to make is that one has to ask that question, what has already happened to you.
 I think the second analytical point is what happens to you during national service, in other words from the day that you first arrived and from the day that you leave, that is important.  I draw your attention to only one aspect and that is what happens to you literally on the first day, because on the first day the conscript would enter into legal or pseudo-legal contracts and agreements.  You become expressly liable to a set of laws. ...(tape ends)  I have tried to count them, but again I mean we wait for the nodal point to get back to us exactly on it.  One point my calculation, personal calculation, was  about between 23 and 30 legal contracts that you enter into.  And that has weight, that would have weight for any person because any law is not something, particularly a law that is as old as 1912 is not something that, is just simply the making of the National Party, it's something that cuts much deeper than that.
 Just one final comment about what happens to you during, and that is when does it end?  An interesting thing, in my view, is that it doesn't end because National Service is something that is succeeded by a system of periodic camps, people get called up.  Now you therefore remain liable to the same set of agreements that you entered into on the day that you started.  So it is not really accurate I think empirically to say of national service in the sense that you often get it in other countries where it's one year, nine months, six months whatever, and it ends, it is something that is essentially your first experience of a lifelong, and as the conflict here progressed, particularly in the 1980's we know now how progressively older people got drawn into the system.  So there was never an end really mentally, that one could see an end to national service.  But that belongs in the second category.  What happens to you during, during the category.
 I think the third category is analytically for me, what happens when you leave, inasmuch as you do leave?  I mean I am not sure that you do leave.  And I think that the attitudes, and it's very difficult as I say to, and I do not know of a study that's been done about this, I know of some studies that the SADF did but they are classified, but I mention just three things.
 I think that there are three attitudes.  The one is there's an enormous amount of cynicism that was developed during national service.  Not necessarily hostility for or against just enormous cynicism about the capacity of public institutions, people in authority to lie, deceive, be less worthy of what previously had been expected of people in positions of authority.  So this is not an experience of good authority.  And again this is not perhpas peculiar to South Africa, but is something that is a universal phenomenon.   The worst thing that you can do in society if you are a pro-militarist, is to introduce national service because that is going to ruin your entire scheme.
 But just since time is tight one final thing.  I think my research shows that probably the most significant social consequence or political consequence of national service was a solidarity among Afrikaans and English-speaking people.  It was the first experience that young White men had of actually having social contact on a systematic basis with people who didn't speak your - didn't share your first language, and one must remember that we lived in socially segregated schools, so I think the solidarity among the White, or the relative disappearance or lessening of White, intra-White differences, can be chiefly, in my view, attributed to national service which had a massive impact, I think, on the politics of the 1980's, particularly the late 1980's where Afrikaner nationalism as it was traditionally understood just doesn't happen. 
 Now the interesting thing is who adopts whose attributes?  And my sense is that the English-speaking community started to adopt increasingly attributes that were increasingly thought to be Afrikaans attributes.  
 So that is the first point that I would like to make, that analytically I think one needs to think empirically in the first instance, be very careful about one's conclusions, and one has to make a distinction between entry, process and exit, what happens during them.
 Secondly, just a couple of figures.  When I first saw them they rattled the two brain cells that can function simultaneously in my mind.  One is, and these are taken from Hansard and as I say we wait the Nodal Point's correction of them, was that you are dealing with a cohort, and that's the technical term for people who are called up annually.  You are dealing with a group of between 20,000 and 40,000 people.  So you've got to add up the number of years to get the global point, and then one can calculate their effect.  
 I think it would be safe to say that no person, in the White community certainly, is socially left untouched by this.  It is pervasive, a socially pervasive influence.  Of course the people who are not liable to call-up they also feel what national service, but of course in quite a different sense.
 Just two final figures, and as I say I would be interested to see what the Nodal Point says about these.  50% of all national servicemen are unemployed, 50% are unemployed, so they don't have a job, so - and that is quite important in terms of this of social attitude, that it is not seen to be a burden because 50% are unemployed.  Now there is a great proportion of them who actually enter into employment but they are immediately given relief and they are actually paid while they are on national service and they have to work the period back.  So, and I mean the Chamber of Commerce might actually and Afrikaanse Handels Instituut might actually give us interesting figures on that.
 Another figure that, the last one that I will burden you with, is 50% of national servicemen, in terms of education accomplishment, have standard 8 or less.  50% of national servicemen have standard 8 or less. Okay.  So this is not to diminish what Jannie has said, this is not an Afrikaans White student at a university, no less.  You know you are dealing with the bulk, the weight of the conscripts have standard 8 or less.
 Now the interesting thing is I mean what do they share and what do they not share with people who are more highly educated, and I think that it's - I would be very, very cautious to adopt the simple spectrum thing that the university students are the more enlightened and the other ones are the less enlightened and now you know Jannie quote in German so let's just trade German insults here, "Die Zimmer ober sind aber klein gebaut", which means the upstairs rooms are often very small.  (General laughter). So let's not think that the Afrikaner elite is necessary more enlightened.  Jammer hoor!