Special Hearings — Conscription Hearings — 1997-07-23

MR LEDGERWOOD: I want to start off and end off with aquote.  The quote that I want to start off with comes from whenI did an army camp in Mamelodi in 1988.
Some Government department had put up billboards all over Malmelodisaying things like "water is a bargain but even bargainsmust be paid for", "housing is a bargain but even housingmust be paid for" and  I think it was to do with the boycott. So being balshey soldiers what we did was chalked it all overour Ratels, "the army is a bargain but even bargains mustbe paid for".  
 I'm not sure where to start.  I grew up in a White middle classhome and I went to a very, very good school.  My parents are stillGod fearing churchgoers who take their religion very, very seriouslyand I suppose that the combination of a good school and the rightkind of upbringing had given me a good old liberal sense of whatwas right and what was wrong.  I went to a school where it waseverybody's stated aim to inculcate the "Mr Chips" valuesof being brave and strong and true and being able to fill theworld with love your whole life through.  
 I was also lucky in that the education that I had received taughtme to be very critical of the society that I lived in.  I didn'texperience poverty, I didn't know how other people lived, butI was aware that there were a lot of people out there who liveda very different life to the one I did.  I can remember cryingwhen reading Cry of the Beloved Country.  I can remember readingsome of the Spruikhuis publications and being struck by some ofthe arguments inside there.  
 I was at the same time enormously interested in the military,even to-day military history and the military are hobbies of mineand at one stage I actually wanted to become a serving officerin the defence force an Infantry Officer.  However by the timeI got to my National Service I'd been accepted by one of the mainstreamchurches as a candidate Minister.  I was in my religious phaseat that stage.  The society that I grew up in had no questionsabout military duty, this was in 1980.  You went to school youregistered when you were sixteen, you went off and did your NationalService, you came home and life carried on as normal.  Your girlfriendwas proud to have somebody who was on the border and the war wasfar, far away.  None of us had ever been to Namibia.  
 I had been called up to report to Sixth South African InfantryBattalion in Grahamstown in July 1980 but wanting to get thisover and done with as quickly as possible made a few phone callsand was re-assigned to the Second South African Infantry BattalionGroup in Walvis Bay in January 1980.  To say that the Army wasa trauma leaves no words to describe how I would later find thesecurity police.   Having travelled by a dusty troop train forfour days from the lush greenery and the gentle cultivated landsof the Western Cape through the Karoo and Namibia the countrybecoming increasingly parched and barren.  We came to the dryNamib Desert where the salt lay maybe thirty centimetres underthe ground and even aluminium rotted.  To-day I kind of see thisas a sign of the journey that I would be taking over the nextthree years.  I tried to fit in like everybody does and to bethe best that I could be but it didn't work because no matterwhat you did you were in trouble.  The aim of basic training whichI understand now has changed was not to equip you with battleskills but was to break you down so that you would blindly followorders and to provide recruits even in 1980 was some moral justificationfor being on the border.  Every Wednesday morning after tea atten o'clock we went to listen to the Dominee telling us why communismwas such a bad idea.  A few days later or  a few lessons latersocialism turned out to be a pretty bad idea too and after thatit was a simple and short step to showing that democracy actuallywasn't the best way you could run things and how America and Russiawere actually on the same side. This was all based on the Bible. Here I was on much better ground because I knew my Bible betterthan the Dominee did and took pleasure in arguing with him untilI was banned from the propaganda classes.  
 I had to go, as I think it was Dominee du Plooy explained earlierto-day, there was a junior and a senior Dominee and after thisthe junior Dominee was the one who came and gave us the propagandaclasses but as soon as he realised what was going on I had toreport to the senior Dominee's office every Wednesday morningon my own.  I didn't fit in at all.  The army was bent on destroyingwhat I was and everything that I had been taught to be and myhigher order needs quickly overrode the army's determination tostamp me into a mould of their own making.  
 Towards the end of my second phase training I became a conscientiousnon-combatant and refused to carry a rifle.  I could not reconcileeverything that I had been taught to hold true with what the armywas doing to me and with what it was teaching me and most importantlywith what it believed about itself.  I got quite a lot of flackabout this.  The favourite argument was, what do you think wouldhappen if everybody did what you did and of course the logicalanswer to that was, well if everybody did what I did then nobodywould be here, we wouldn't have national service.  This reallyconfused them because they hated national service so they didn'tknow what to say to that argument but there were others that wereworse, things like what would I do if a terrorist murdered mymother?  
 Under the rules of those days you could only become a conscientiousnon-combatant if you were a religious pacifist and so that wasthe argument that I had to put forward.  The Dominee was alwaysthere swift and insidious like a serpent.  I can remember himexplaining to me that Greutesh(?) the Dutch theologian had writtenof the concept of the just war and that South Africa was indeedfighting exactly such a war.  I had my doubts but didn't voicethem instead I took refuge in the Bible.  That was the great thing,the Bible was the final word on everything and eventually theyleft me alone.  
 I went through a very bad time in my first year, the world thatI had been taught to believe in did not exist.  I can remembergetting a letter from a very concerned Minister of the churchthat I was a member of, asking me about this and writing backto him that as far as I was concerned Christianity did not applyin the SADF.  All of my belief systems were under siege but perhapshaving to defend them made me stronger and more able to acceptwhat was about to come.  
 During my second year things calmed down a lot.  I made a friendwho introduced me to Andre Brink and in quick succession I readThe Dry White Season and An  instant in the  Wind and Rumoursof Rain.  He was a university graduate and we spoke a lot aboutthe army and society and this was the first decent conversationI'd had in the army.  At one stage I was the only matriculantin the company of two hundred and twenty people.  I started thinkingseriously about why I was there and what it meant to be a NationalServiceman.  The long and gentle pressure to conform to simplybe swept away with the tide of received wisdom was making me restlessand urging me to be free.  In a sense the arguments and defencesI had put up the previous year had made me examine quite criticallywho and why I was and why I was there.  
 One of the conclusions that I increasingly came to during mysecond year was that it was morally wrong, intrinsically wrong,evil in itself.  There was no way that I could justify being involvedin any way with the defence force.  Although I had not and wouldnot participate in any actions the whole atmosphere reeked ofmoral turpitude and all I had to go one was what the defence forcetold me.  I thought them that believing what the SADF had to sayabout the ANC and SWAPO was a bit like asking the devil for areference on the Pope.  
 Eventually, in October it all came together.  I got drunk oneevening with some friends and we decided to go AWOL.  I'd readabout the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Gaboronesand an organisation called the South African Military ResistersAid Fund also in Gaborones and had decided to desert and to makecontact with the UNHCR or SAMRA.  From there I'd hoped to be putinto contact with the ANC to join Umkhonto weSizwe and to workfor something that I could at least believe in more than whatI was involved in at that stage.  It wasn't really that I supportedthe ANC after all I didn't really know anything about them itwas just that I could not support the SADF.   
 I had an interesting few weeks.  The guy that I had gone on AWOLwith was a pay clerk and he stole the permanent force salary forWalvis Bay.  There was great consternation that Monday morning,I must tell you this.  We split it and in those far off days beforedigit inflation four thousand rand was a hell of a lot of money. We slept over at Swakopmund, split the money and went our separateways.  He returned to camp and was arrested on the Monday morning. I went to Cape Town where I stayed while deciding how best toproceed.  I left for Johannesburg going via Knysna, Port Elizabeth,Cradock before joining up with a young hitchhiker who had justbeen released from jail for car theft when I reached Colesburg. In Johannesburg it turned out he was a member of a small groupof street children and I hung around with them for a while stayingin the Salvation Army hostel in Berea until I'd gathered up enoughcourage to buy a train ticket for Mafeking early in November.  Being young, foolish. unprepared and on my own I was caughtas I was about to climb over the border fence at Ramaklabana. It was then that the nightmare began.  I was handed over to theZeerust branch of the security police who interrogated me forabout two weeks or so.  I can remember very few details exceptthe screaming.  I was nineteen years old at the time.  The darknights of my soul had began.  It has been very interesting forme over the past week to follow Geoff Benzien's testimony on television. I'd thought for so long that I had been alone now it seems asif my experiences while not common but certainly not unique. I can remember being marched naked with a police blanket overme and handcuffed down the main street of Zeerust to the Magistrate'soffice where this kindly old gentleman offered me some coffeeand read my confession with growing horror.  The security policefor example had insisted that I include the fact that I was preparedto kill my own parents in the name of the struggle while he carefullysigned every page until the story was over.  I think that theabsolute worst moment, worse even that the repeated interrogationswas the moment at Waterkloof Airforce Base when the security policemanescorting me back to Walvis Bay took out his trip authorisationto show the controller.  He also showed a body receipt for mewhich was all I was, a body, one body in transit to Walvis Bay. One more dead body didn't matter.  This was the same securitypoliceman who'd just bought me a packet of cigarettes.  
 It became ...(inaudbile)  Introduced me to a simple piece ofpaper and years later watching Schindler's List I suddenly realisedwhat it must have felt like in some small part in the death camps. I was then handed over to Walvis Bay Security Branch where interrogationand torture continued.  They thought that I was part of some largercommunist plot and the South West Africa Army Intelligence alsointerrogated me.  It was a relief to be handed over to militarycustody after about two months.  The military treated me far betterthan the police did although the police came and fetched me fromthe military cells every night for further interrogation.   Therewere other incidents that I can remember while in detention. Joking with the Colonel in charge of Military Intelligence afterbeing interrogated.  Betraying everybody who had ever said anythingat all to me while I was under interrogation.  The shame at havingbeen broken.  A police Major telling me that he could kill meand that no-one would know and I think the most poignant of all,being taken out to the spit of land outside of Walvis Bay Harbourthe last night of the interrogation and being given a cheese burger,chips and a coke having a smoke afterwards and the question, thesame one I would hear time and time again over the years, do youreally think the Blacks will ever govern this country?  And theremark on my security police file when in all these years of interrogatingpeople the security police Captain had never met anybody who heldonto his beliefs so strongly.  I took that as a compliment.  
 One the nicest experiences I ever had was being handed over fromsecurity police custody to military police custody.  I didn'tknow it but there were military policeman from 1021 Battalionwho were performing military police duties in Walvis Bay.  Assoon as the security police left these guys chased everybody intothe cells and brought out two bottles of brandy and a packet ofcigarettes Black guys, sit down tell us all about it we've beenwaiting for you and it was just so strange.  
 In March I was sent to One Military Hospital in Pretoria forpsychological evaluation.  The TRC has since told me that theSADF had found that I had been suffering from very severe traumabut made the decision to treat me as normal.  I suppose that thisis fairly normal for oppressive regimes.  You can't classify themas other in other words like in Black or terrorist then classifythem as mad which either enough and serves to explain their obviouslydelinquent behaviours.  
 My court martial was a relief after everything else that hadhappened.  I had the Sergeant Major of the military police tellingthe President that I was the best behaved prisoner he had everhad.  I had a medical doctor telling the Colonel how I saved anepileptic's life while he was having an attack in the DB.  I hadglowing references from the young Dominee but best of all my defencelawyer, best friend ,had just been banned for five years.  Weexpected that I would get five years civilian jail in Pollsmoorso we were very relieved when the Colonel of the court martialsaid the SADF is not a political organisation and so can makeno findings on charges one to fifty.  These were the charges underthe various Suppression of Communism, Suppression of Terrorismacts.  We were quite surprised because they had a signed statementthat I wanted to go and join the ANC and what they said as well,we don't care we're not worried about it.  For going AWOL andtheft we sentence you to a further six months detention.  I hadbeen in solitary confinement for seven months and was to remainin solitary for another two.  It was over except that it wasn't. 
 My life after that was substantially and subtly different.  Ifound myself emotionally exhausted for years afterwards, I'm talkingtwelve years afterwards.  My sense of dissociation and alienationwas acute.  Before the TRC I'd never met anybody who'd been througheven remotely similar experiences to these, except for one guywho is now my best friend, a guy who spent his time instructingUNITA in Angola and had gone through some quite harsh things. 
 Even now it is as if it had all happened to someone else andas if I was simply an observer looking in from the outside.  Thisbrings me to the point of my story.  I've noticed in the lastfew weeks some quite bad press that the TRC has been getting. The TRC has deeply affected my life in a short space of timethat has elapsed since I first came to their offices here in CapeTown and told my story to one of the investigators.  It has begana healing process in all sorts of relationships in my family andhas enabled me to begin on my own road to any healing.  I cannotclaim to speak for all victims I haven't met any other victims. There are many who have suffered more than I have.  I can speakonly for myself but from my point of view the reportage missesa vital point, the role and reaction and feelings of the victims. Having gone to the TRC with my story it is almost as if it'salright to talk about it now.  Slowly things are changing as ifI've been freed from a prison in which I have been in for eighteenyears.  
 It is also as if my family have been freed.  My brother who workedfor Armscor for five or six years in the 1980's is all of a suddenmuch softer, more human and more able to talk to me.  The lasttime I saw him he told me that he feels that he should have donemore, that he should have tried harder.  Perhaps this is the mostimportant and yet unpublisised role of the TRC not to extractconfessions from F.W. and Magnus and people like that no, theymust live with their own consciences and will have their own demonsto haunt them as they grow older and increasingly irrelevant. I believe it is the victims who are important.  I don't knowhow the TRC has affected other people's lives but if my experienceis anything to go by a vast amount of healing has already beendone.  It is almost as if the silence is ending as if we are wakingup from a long bad nightmare.  We are not living under a tyrannyof silence anymore in a world of double speak, it is the dawnthat has come of our freedom from fear and our fear of freedom,it is the dawn that so many have worked for and the darkness cannotovercome it.  Looking back I wonder sometimes why I did what Idid.  
 One of the biggest problems is that the previous Government criminalisedwhat I had done and severely limited my options for sharing myexperiences.  I'm to this day careful with whom I share my trials. Why did I do it?  I don't know.  I hope that if I'm ever facedwith the same choices I would make the same decisions.  I'm nota pacifist, war has been part of the human condition for so longfor as long as there have been humans.  As Professor Phillip Tobiashas said, "it's not nature that is red in tooth and claw,it is mankind."  
 I believe that a well trained and prepared defence force is integralto the long term continuance of our nation and to protect thisgentle thing that we call democracy.  I think that it is ThomasJefferson who wrote that occasionally the tree of freedom needsto be watered with the blood of free man.  I'm still involvedwith the military.  I'm a member of the part time forces.  I believethat it's each person's duty to contribute to their country inproportion to the gifts that their country has given them.  I'vebeen extraordinary fortunate and want to give back to the countrywhatever I can and this is my way of contributing.  I believeas Doctor Nathan said earlier to-day, that the military is theultimate expression of the will of the people.  There's not muchyou can do to argue with an Olifant tank or a Ratel 90.  Thisis why abuse of this enormous power is so evil.  Now that thepeople have a chance to express their will I would like to bepart of that.  ....... wrote that war is a continuation of politicsby other means by this he means that is the purpose of war toserve political or economic goals.  Unfortunately it is the natureof world to serve only itself.  I believe that the defence forceneeds people who understand the place and the role of the societyand the conflict between these two roles of war and they can betrusted to make decisions based on that understanding.  
 There are plenty of things that give me hope.  The fact thatmy own children can speak Zulu fluently at the age of ten, thatgives me hope.  On December the 16th I saw a young Afrikaans girlwatching Sarafina, that gives me hope.   I don't know how longit's going to take to change but things are changing.  
 I want to close with a quote from Sinad O'Conner from a albumcalled Universal Mother, the song is called Famine, 
"If there's ever going to be healing there has to be remembranceand then grieving so that there can be forgiving there has tobe knowledge and understanding."  
Thank you.