Special Hearings — Conscription Hearings — 1997-07-23

MR GAGIANO: Okay.  I am not absolutely sure, that's why I asked a rather facetious question now, exactly what I can offer the Commission, but I can tell you what I've got.
 I made a number of studies of the opinions of White students in the eighties on a number of issues which are interesting, I believe, to the Truth Commission, and what I can offer is simply, or what I can offer with any form of authority is based on the observations I made of the attitudes, the states of minds, the orientations, the views of White students in the eighties.  
 The last survey I made was with the support of ADDUCE, and that included all the so-called historically White universities in South Africa.  We had a very good sample.  I don't think anyone would want to undercut the validity of my observations on the basis of technical aspects, like the statistical representativeness of the sample and so, I think that is quite okay and you can accept that as okay, I think.  It has been accepted in the more scientific community as okay.  So it's based on that.
 The story I want to tell you has to do with the mindset of the typical White conscriptee as that mindset was a reflection of the general view of the world that held in White communities at that time.  It perhaps even holds in some White communities now.
 The interest of the study that I undertook was to, at that stage, to look into the political culture of what was termed the "ruling group" in South Africa.  That was why it was only extended to White students.
 I want to make a further observation, and that is that students are a little bit more "verligt", a little bit more liberated, liberalised, if you want to, not liberated, liberalised, than the general peer group of people that would also be inducted into the army through the recruitment process.  So the views that I am going to reflect to you here are the sort-of verligte, more enlightened sort of side of the spectrum.  It gets even darker as you go down through the socio-economic strata.  The Germans have a saying "Abitur macht liberal", which means basically "education makes you more liberal", and it can generally be accepted that that holds in this case as well. 
 I am going to tell you a little story that has to do with explaining the environment, the institutional and the societional environment in which a typical White recruitee would be "socialised" is the technical word we use for that, a sort-of getting a general political and other education which sets the mind to orientate itself towards the world in which it encounters others, and sets down the basic values of orientation and beliefs about the world in which politics is conducted.
 So I want to kick off with telling you about the socialisation environment of students.  Why I am doing this is because I want to explain to you that people are very much made by their environment and that if you want to get a fair picture of what drove people to commit themselves to being recruited into the military, fighting a sharp war on the border or being prepared and willing and available to act against fellow South Africans in the townships, for instance sitting on a casspir and throwing missiles or whatever else at their fellow South Africans, then one must at least try and understand it in terms of the socialisation experience in the community environment which gave shape to their attitudes and states of mind.
 So let me start, I haven't got so much time, so let me start with giving you an idea of the type of socialisation environment in which White students found themselves and hence one can extend that to the typical recruit that would enter through conscription the military formations in the country.
 I think I will start off my story with a little joke if you will allow that. You must stop me if my jokes get a little bit too risque.  It's a story about two large insurance giants who wanted of course to set up an advertising campaign to sell their products and the first one started with the slogan, "We insure you from the cradle to the grave".  The second one thought they have to top this one so they suggested the slogan, "We insure you from the womb to the tomb".  And the third one had to get the upper hand again so they suggested the slogan, "We insure you from the erection to the resurrection".  
 Now I am telling that story to give you an idea of the way in which the type of socialisation environment in which White conscriptees found themselves at that time was a sort-of a totalising system. There was very little by way of which they could escape the influence, the effects, the socialisation, the mind-shaping effects of community of association like, of the type of institutions that penetrated the White community of the time.
 I will give you some details of that by showing you a couple of what one can call the empirical features of that state of affairs.  Very briefly you know this.  I don't want to give you figures about that, but you know that to a large extent the Afrikaner, as a group, were largely committed in terms of their political loyalty to the National Party and Conservative Party.  The English-speaking people largely to the Democratic Party and the National Party.  The UDF and the ANC had less than 5% of support in student ranks at that time, and I am talking about a survey that was conducted in 1989.
 So the picture I want to draw for you is one in which the mindset, the attitudes, the views, the ideologies that held in the ranks of the National Party, in the Democratic Party, in the Conservative Party were the type of values, views of the world that came through to the typical student, recruitee, that we are talking about.
 Now the examples I want to give you very quickly is to show you the extent to which students, let's call them conscriptees in this case, because you are more interested in that than students, the way they adopted the political identification and views of their parents.  If you were a National Party, member of the National Party as a student, as a recruitee, the chances that your father would also be a member of the National Party was about 80%.  And similar percentages for Conservative Party and Democratic Party people.  In other words what I want to show you is the extent to which the family environment shaped the party loyalty and identification of children.  There's a continuity, right.
 The same holds for mothers, even more so.  The boy apparently takes more from his mother than his father in terms of loyalty, marginally more, but there is a little bit of support for that idea. 
 One can look at closest friends.  On the question, who do you discuss politics the most with?  About 70% of National Party members would say they speak about politics to National Party friends.  In the case of the DP almost 80%.  DP's speak to DP's.  Nats speak to Nats.  CP's speak to CP's more than to anyone else.  The point I am trying to make is that people stay within a sort-of cocoon.  They stay within a closed universe of intellectual and moral discourse which tends to - because I want to make this point as well, because of the critical mass, the numbers of people available, to find quite a fulfilling and complete political experience and political socialisation within a political mass where there are so many other people thinking and talking like that is quite fulfilling.  You don't have a need to go very much beyond your group to find out more about politics.  That is the type of environment I want to depict to you.
 If you ask people, like I did, let's talk about this, whether they speak to any of their Black South African fellow students at the University, the numbers are negligible.  In other words there was very little intercourse between White students and Black students about politics, about political relevant sort-of issues of the day.  It was again an encapsulated environment even at the campuses where Black students were present there was very little intercourse between White and Black students.  They would report less than 8% and that's the highest frequency of any form of discussion, contact, of a political nature with Black students.  The point again is the level of encapsulation.
 If one looks at another factor which shapes and influences political views of the world one can look at the media, both the electronic media and the printed media.  Again if you look at the figures it's the same picture again.  Afrikaners read Afrikaans newspapers.  Almost, I can give you the figures, in the case of Afrikaans students, less than 13% or one is 13% read any English newspapers whatsoever.  That's an example.  You must look at your watch and tell me if I am giving you stuff you are not interested in. In the case of the English speaker less than 10% read anything that was printed in Afrikaans.  If one looks at the newspapers that were associated with some aspects of what you might call the liberation movement ethos view of the world, that sort of ideological picture of the world, less than 3% of Afrikaners read for instance New Nation.  Less than 15% read Vrye Weekblad.  Less than 5% read the Weekly Mail and Guardian.  Just to give you an idea.  In other words again a closed universe.  
 You can say the information was available, you could have read about this, you could have known more about the world in which you lived, you could have understood the world better than you actually in the end did and which you perhaps, now that you see the world in a different light, might want to admit to, but the actual state of affairs was one of a fairly closed universe, of intercourse with the environment as it was interpreted through the media.  And experiences and pictures of life was very much dependent on the way it was depicted by important authority sources.  On the basis of, let me just make that observation, on the basis of the authority of the media.  
 Again and more so the Afrikaans speaking than English speaking students had a great reliance and trust in the type of information that came out of newspapers.  You ask them do you trust the information coming out of newspapers, trust information coming out of television and more than 50% of Afrikaans-speaking students showed a very high trust and confidence in the printed and in the electronic media.  In other words the way the SABC told the story reflected the nature of things.  That's the truth, it's not just a story it is the way world works, you see.  They didn't have the advantage of all sorts of philosophical training showing the hermeneutic sort-of mediation of all sorts of influences and depicting reality.  So that was reality.  That was the way the world works for them.  I make this point to show you the closed universe.
 Now what is my time.  I have used about ten minutes haven't I, a little bit more.  Now I want to show you the effects of that towards the State and its central institutions, the way the State and its central institutions were viewed, were accepted, were legitimised, were trusted by White recruitees at the time of this observation in 1989.  I say this because of course the State was the institution that absorbed the recruitees and set them into fight informations in the situation today that you are interested.  You are interested in probably the border war, you are interested in what happened in townships and so on and the type of experiences that recruitees had in those environments.  So what was the mindset that brought them to be quite, and I would suggest quite happy, to do the job they were enjoined by the State to do, the type of deeds they were enjoined by the State to perform?
 I will do this by briefly showing you their attitudes of acceptance, legitimisation, trust, sympathy towards State institutions on the one hand, and on the other hand what the major State ideologists at the time depicted as the enemy, largely the liberation movements and the centrepiece of the liberation movements, the ANC.  
 So by showing you what they thought of the State and by showing you what they thought of the ANC at the time, right, one can get a picture of how their minds worked, and from there to what extent they could legitimise to themselves the type of actions that requires quite a remarkable degree of sort-of fortitude and even exposure to personal brutality.  To shoot another person, or shoot at another person is quite a sort-of heavy demand, it's not something you do just between breakfast and lunch in a normal life.  So to bring yourself to that level requires a certain type of motivation which I just want to give you a brief outline of.  I didn't particularly ask what motivates you to shoot people, but I can give you a rough idea of the attitude towards the central State institutions.
 Now do you want me to tell you about the technical aspects about how I did the measurement?  Not really.  You just want the story.  Some people would be interested in that.
 The long and the short of it is that sympathy towards the State and what it stood for and what it wanted to preserve and protect and stabilise in South Africa was rather high amongst White students, especially of course high amongst Afrikaans speaking White students and much more obvious and to a greater extent the case than amongst English-speaking White students.  Just on an index which shows sympathy towards what I call the "core State", that again on a technical basis could be identified as the central security apparatus, ideological apparatus and administrative apparatus of the State, just the attitudes towards those parts of the apparatus of the State was at the level of about 60% positive feeling towards what it represented, what it entailed, what it wanted to do, what it wanted to preserve at the time.  Amongst Afrikaans-speaking students that went up to about 75%, English-speaking students the level was around 52%, just to give you an idea.  
 In other words a very positive attitude towards the main players that were institutionally part of the landscape, (...indistinct) the State, its authority, its legitimacy, one would say its moral authority to command and bring people to participate in acts of war, repression and so on towards what was then seen as the formations within the liberation movements.  
 Again by party you can break it down and again it will show that the extent to which that endorsement of the State occurred was of course one which corresponded roughly with the left-right spectrum in politics.  The more you worked through the Conservative Party the more you supported what the State was doing and as you moved across towards in the direction of course the UDF the less of that was the case.  It fitted perfectly in terms of a sort-of a conflict model and a polarised model of conflict in South Africa.
 I can tell you, if this is interesting to you, that at the time of course the core State was supported by what I call the sort-of coopted structures which supplemented and acted as sort of auxiliary formations of the State - I am talking about the Homeland system, I am talking about the Tricameral Parliament and so on, those institutions also subscribed by the State and of course institutions that were fought tooth and nail by the liberation movements, and there were great attempts to de-legitimise those institutions had extensive support across the board especially in the more English-speaking sector.  So you can say the English-speaking sector didn't support the core State because it was rather a sort-of Afrikaner state and that's why they weren't so enthusiastic about it.  But they were much more enthusiastic about the auxiliary formations, about the Tricameral system, about the Homeland leaders, about the Homeland system, that the sort-of second tier type of fortifications that the core State in South Africa built around itself, to protect itself, to insulate itself from the ANC and the liberation movements.
 A further important aspect which comes closer to the issues here is of course support for the security establishment.  By that I mean support for the police, security police and the defence force. Now the remarkable thing about this is that they were the flavour of the month in terms of legitimacy, in terms of sympathy, in terms of support and in terms of public authority.  The security establishment, the elements in the security establishment drew a much higher sympathy rating than for instance, say Parliament, or the State President or the SABC or any of the other elements in the State system at the time.  They were really the people that had sympathy.  In the case of Afrikaans speakers almost 80%, English speakers something like 45, 40% support.  
 So at the time the mindset was, I can imagine freely interpreting this, that the security establishment was doing a pretty good job fighting the war on the border and using the apparatus of the State to keep the townships and other points  of conflict and volatility in check and subject to coercive social control.
 I see Wilhelm is sort-of winking at me saying that my time is getting short, so I will show you another aspect of this quickly.   I was also interested to see to what extent there was any type of support in student ranks at the time for the type of civil disobedience, popular mobilisation, strike action style of protest behaviour in the society.  Students are sort-of, not notorious, if you like them, they are famous for being at the cutting edge of leading the people against all the injustices that emerge in  society and the universities were places of conspicuous display of that type of action, especially the English-speaking campuses, so I was  interested to see to what extent.
 When the liberation movements started using that technique, libero-technique of mobilisation is one of the four pillars of struggle in the eighties, to what extent one could gauge support emerging or growing in the ranks of White students to support those type of initiatives, to cross over the great divide, so-to-speak, the great polarised antagonism in the society and fight for justice on the other side, so-to-speak if we want to.  Now very low again.  
 I took a measurement of what you can call the protest potential of students on things like, will you join a boycott?  Will you march?  Will you stage some sort of sit-in?  Will you join this, will you join that, which was part of the repertoire of action underwritten and promoted by the UDF at the time.  Again very low.   Right.  In other words we don't do that sort of thing, that sort of thing is done by the enemy.  We don't participate in that and we don't want to advance the fortunes of the enemy by giving them some sort of support along that line.
 Protest potential, protest action has got a countervailing force, a counter-point.  The State usually acts against it, it says we don't want that sort of thing and we know how sharp the State acted against  that sort of activity all along the line.  So you could also measure the extent to which people would endorse the State but it acted against those type of actions.
 We build a little scale called a coercive potential scale, that was to what extent would you support the State, go only with the State, justify State action to repress a protest march, act in a coercive way towards a sit-in and all the different strikes and things like that which was part of the protest repertoire of the time?  
 Now this is rather remarkable as far as I am concerned.  The high degree of support for coercive action by the State in the case of we've got a measurement that I've called repression potential, in other words the extent to which you would be prepared to support the State if it acted in that way towards - and really we are talking about the high eighties amongst the Afrikaans-speaking students in supporting that type of action.  We are talking about the 60% level, 65% level when we talk about the English-speaking White students.  So to put it bluntly and brutally and perhaps not very sensitively, give them hell!  Right, that was the idea.  
 There's a threat here, there's some sort of disruptive type of force mounted against the stability of the State, the community as we know it, against the sort of political cosmology that we prefer and we know that God is on our side in any case, so let's use the State to stabilise the situation.
 Perhaps lastly, attitudes towards liberation movements.  What did you think of the liberation movements?  Legitimacy, liberation movements coming to power.  The type of question we asked was, how would you feel about and what would your reaction be if the ANC, PAC and other liberation movements came to power?  Again not a very - or a picture that displays the extent of antagonism, the extent of polarisation and the intolerance, if you want to, towards the political advancement of the programmes of the liberation movements.
 I've got figures here which sort-of, the question that is asked is, what is your response to say an ANC government coming to power in South Africa?  The answer categories:
I would welcome it;
 would accept it; 
 would be uncertain about what it would entail; protest against it peacefully; 
 emigrate for political reasons, and 
 resist physically.
 Now perhaps the "resist physically" is the interesting one.  In the case of Afrikaans-speakers about 45% said that they would resist physically; 31% said that they would emigrate and 12% that they would protest against it peacefully.  Now if you mount it up there isn't very much left for the other categories. 1,1% would welcome it.
 The English-speaking side is a little bit more favourable.  57% would go for the what you might call, the negative options, go away, especially the English-speaking, they are the immigrators, you know the old "Pack for Perth" phenomenon that was discussed in the eighties quite a bit, when it gets a bit tough between the main players in politics well, what the hell let's go out of here, it's not worth staying, and that is reflected also in the greater endorsement of that option on the part of the English-speaking.
 So the picture I want to put to you is one of a community of people, very well organised within the associational and institutional forms in the White community and especially in the core of the White community in terms of the conflict, namely the Afrikaner community.  An almost totalised, insulated world of socialisation which made it very hard for people to shape an independent view of the world, and to really reconsider the moral premises of their commitment to participate in the type of activities that the State required of them and of course compelled them to perform, because as we know conscription was a compulsory system.  You had to go one way or the other, whatever misgivings you might have had.
 My suggestion is that the misgivings that people might have had can be exaggerated if one only looks at those people who now say that they felt sorry for what they did.  There were a lot of people there who felt sorry - that's my view, sorry for what they did at all, they thought they were doing the King and Country, defending against the evil empire and their surrogates type of job in South Africa.  I've got a little item here which measures attitudes towards communism and the threat of communism, and it's tremendously high, communism was a big threat.  I can show you the figures on that. 
 So that is the picture.  A fairly closed universe of socialisation, shaping influences type of mentalities, views, motives, reality pictures and so on which must be, I think, considered if you want to get a fair picture of what drove and motivated people to do rather nasty things to other people, and especially because they were also a fellow South African.  Thank you.