Special Hearings — Conscription Hearings — 1997-07-23

MS CLEMINSHAW: I am Dot Cleminshaw and I am about to
 read a copy of a summary made by Dr Peter Moll who is living and working in Washington DC at the moment.  As to why he asked me to read this submission, as he himself said, "after you were involved in this issue long before I was and you stood by me", which was a privilege.  
 I am what is called a Human Rights Activist and I commenced on this path from the time the National Party government came to power in 1948.  I joined an organisation which was formed right then in that same year called the Civil Rights League.  By the time that apartheid was being defended by the military and conscription was extended to all White males, which was in 1967, I was already campaigning against conscription.  The very first victims were the Jehovah Witnesses who were being sentenced to repeated 90 days in detention barracks, and suffering greatly because they were not allowed to wear their own clothing or a blue uniform.  Some of them sat in the winter at Voortrekker Hoogte just in their underpants.  
 I did a great deal of writing of articles, letters to the Press, of speaking at meetings. I became a committee member of the Civil Rights League in the year that Dr Verwoerd was assassinated which was 1969, and I was then able to bring this particular issue on board at those meetings, with the result that in 1970 the Civil Rights League organised a conference specifically on conscientious objection.  And the papers were presented by Dr Francis Wilson, a Quaker; Mrs Anna Pearce; myself and a then 16 year-old schoolboy, Frank Molteno, who was about to face this.  
 Our resolution was circulated to all the churches, the South African Council of Churches and the Christian Institute.  It called for alternative forms of national service quite divorced from the military.  It called for respect for the human rights of conscientious objectors based on human rights as outlined in the United Nations Charter.
 I became a member of the Black Sash and I worked at the Christian Institute, although I am not a Christian, I worked in the Sprokas(?) Programme.  I joined the Conscientious Objectors Support Group.  I joined the End Conscription Campaign.  I was on trial with Beyers Naude and others for refusing to answer the questions of the Shlebusch Commission.  I wrote papers and had them published about the torture allegations of security prisons.  I wrote papers about conscientious objection and what was happening.  Some of these papers were published in Pro Veritate, the Christian Journal.
 So of course I got to know Peter Moll when his time came and I attended his court martial at Wynberg.  I got to know his parents and I attended his court martial, that is to say, outside of the court at the Castle.  I corresponded with him over the years.  This is Peter Moll's summary.
 After completing school I obeyed my army call-up instruction in 1974 and spent 12 months in service at the 84 TSD base in Grahamstown.  I became a conscientious objector in July 1976.  While at a conference held by the Students Christian Association on the University of Natal Pietermaritzburg Campus it was pointed out by Michael Cassidy of Africa Enterprise that the guerillas of the ANC and SWAPO were young men like myself who wanted justice and an end to apartheid so that the SADF was not fighting a foreign aggressor but was engaged in a civil war.  The message struck home.  I decided that it was impossible for me any longer to go to military camps or to prepare for action in Namibia.
 My motive was based upon general moral reasoning and Christian theological ethics.  I was not a pacifist, although I had and still have great respect for pacifists.  My objection was to the unjust nature of the war being conducted by the SADF inasmuch as it was in defence of White supremacy under the guise of protecting Christianity from Communism.
 I was called up for a three month camp headed for Namibia in Decmeber 1977.  I refused to go and wrote a letter to the Commandant of my unit, Cape Flats Commando, indicating why.  I argued essentially that the White government had imposed apartheid on Black people in South Africa and was now engaged in a war against representatives of the Black majority, hence the army was engaged in defending apartheid.  As a Christian I could not be part of the army under these circumstances.  I was tried at the Wynberg Magistrate's Court on the 27th of December 1977 and sentenced to three months imprisonment suspended for five years.  I was called up again for a four day shoot in June 1979.  I refused again.  I was tried by a Military Court Martial at the Youngsfield Military Base in Wynberg on the 21st of September 1979 and was sentenced to a R50,00 fine.  I was called up for the last time for a 15 day camp to start on 19th November 1979.  I refused once more.  I was arrested on the 22nd of November 1979 and taken to the detention barracks in Wynberg.
 On 4th December 1979 I was tried by a military court martial at the Castle in Cape Town.  In South African Military Law courts martial are open to observers but attendance at this one was wrongfully limited to two relatives.  The sentence, 18 months detention barracks was obviously rigged.  It was reduced to 12 months upon review.  
 I was transferred to the detention barracks in Pretoria.  There I refused to perform military exercises such as saluting and rifle training and to wear the military uniform, arguing that I was a conscientious objector.  I was tried by a summary court martial on 11 occasions and sentenced to periods of solitary confinement varying from 7 to 14 days, the legal maximum.  Altogether I spent 139 days in solitary.  
 In August 1980 the Army gave in to public pressure and permitted me to wear non-military garb.  I was released on the 2nd of December 1980.  Jail and solitary confinement was a distressing experience. Daily insults and yelling by corporals, boredom and loneliness, inadequate food, freezing cold showers in winter, no newspapers or any other kind of news media, no sports facilities, indescribable filth in the vicinity of the ablution blocks, regular four-day cycles of constipation and diarrhoea etc.  
 The minute and arbitrary controls over my actions combined with the deliberate efforts to deprive the inmates of possessions and mental stimulation made me extremely tense and aggressive. However I was not tortured and did not suffer any permanent damage.  
 I was supported by my friends and family. I was adopted by an amnesty international group and received many letters from Mennonites in the United States and elsewhere.  I am very thankful to all of these people for their support.  I learned much about myself and became stronger.  My knowledge of the rightness of the cause and my faith in God strengthened me. 
 After my release life returned to normal.  I travelled on an exchange programme in Latin America during 1981 and then pursued studies in theology until 1984 and in economics until 1987.  During this period I was involved in a conscientious objector support group and the activities of the End Conscription Campaign.  I frequently gave speeches about conscientious objection and conscription. I taught at the University of Cape Town from 1988 to 1989 before leaving for the United States. 
 Although the Army would have been entitled to call me up again, it did not.  I speculate that it feared adverse publicity for upon leaving the detention barracks, I had it made it clear that I would refuse again if I were called up.  My action and that of a small group in the 1970's spawned further military resistance in the 1980's.  Many churches were conscientised into adopting positions on the subject.  The government was forced to respond, which it did by amending the law in 1983 to permit religious pacifists to do non-military service, while raising the maximum sentence for other objectors from a repeatable two to a single period of six years. 
 These elements of resistance to conscription in turn led to the formation of the End Conscription Campaign.  I believe that the War Resistance Movement played an important part in accelerating the collapse of apartheid.  --  By Peter Graham Moll.