Special Hearings — Conscription Hearings — 1997-07-23

GLENDA WILDSCHUT: Thank you very much Laurie.  You haveraised several very important issues in your submission this afternoon,and I think that your last statement is a very powerful challengeto the broader community out there, not only just to Whites butto all of us to begin building together.
 I want to make one comment and then Pumla will help us facilitateone or two questions from the audience that they might want toput to you.  You are right, we had just before lunch we had asubmission about the link between conscription and PTSD, posttraumatic stress disorder and I think that it's important to notethat all people who had joined any army liable to or are exposedto the possibility of having PTSD.  So today we are particularlooking at conscripts, we are looking at the link between PTSDand conscriptees, but we are also very aware that many peoplewho joined other armies themselves suffer the consequences ofthat war.  
 Having said that Pumla, I hand over to you and you can have oneor two short, crisp pointed questions to Laurie, thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you Glenda and thank you very muchLaurie.  We really value inputs from the audience and so we givethis time to just three questions.  Some of you have been withus since morning and so you all understand the constraints oftime, thank you.  I just wanted to say there are interpretationdevices available if you would like to use them.  There's a buttonon the side but there are interpreters available.  Do you allhave this interpretation device?  If there is anybody who doesnot have one you will be handed the device.  At the side is abutton, Xhosa is on Channel Three, the other side has the volumebutton however Xhosa is on Channel Three.  Thank you very much.
 At this point I will invite some comments or questions from theaudience if there are any.  There are none, good.  Do you wantto ask Richard?  Okay there are no questions.  I have a commentwhich is almost like a question as well. The issue of conscience.  I think one of the struggles we've had in our society is thedifficulty for people to exercise individual decision and to allowconscience to rise above authority.  I think in some of the submissionswe've had to-day we've heard quite a lot about socialisation andthe power of authority and I don't know what programmes we couldengage in to teach people the importance of individuality as faras making informed decisions.  I think we talked about being self-critical,which I think is important, but what are the actual strategiesthat you can use to get people there, to get people to questionauthority, to have the prerogative to ask these pertinent questionsthat very few of you in your organisation asked?  What sort ofstrategies do you think people can be taught, obviously perhapsthere might be a generation that we have lost, that is the oldergeneration in this case, but how best can we teach people strategiesof self critisism?

DR NATHAN: There are two ways which I think are  extremelyimportant in that regard.  The first is the way in which we educateyoung people and whether we're educating them to be critical orwe are discouraging questions and critisism?  The second obviousarea is the response of Government to criticism.  The more torrentGovernment is of criticism, the more free we citizens will feelto be critical.  And I've often made the point in other Africancountries, when we debate the issue of democracy, to illustratehow free I regard our country, it would be possible in this country,unlike most other African countries, for somebody to stand upin front of Parliament, on a soap box and say that he thinks PresidentMandela is a silly old fool.  No-one would pay that person anyattention.  This is not something one can do in authoritarianstates,  so the degree of tolerance on the part of authoritiesis obviously critical.
 In the case of armed forces it's difficult to encourage a criticalattitude, becuase particularly in situations of stress one expectssoldiers to follow orders and not have ethical debates but ourconstitution is unequivocal in it's provision that members ofthe security forces are obliged to disobey a manifestly illegalcommand.  Now that imposes a duty on the security forces to educatetheir members on what constitutes a lawful command and what constitutesan unlawful command.  I'm not personally familiar with the effortsof the police in this regard but the defence force under the auspicesof Minister Modise has made this a major thrust of the transformationprogramme within the Department of Defence.  He has initiatedthe development of a civic education programme on democracy forall members, civilian and military, who serve in the Departmentand in the defence force.  The curricula for that programme havebeen completed and there are six chapters which consider Multi-CulturalDiversity, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the essentialfeatures of a democratic political system, International HumanitarianLaw, including the Geneva Convention, Civil Military Relationsin a Democracy and Military Professionalism in a Democracy.  Sothrough that programme of education and training the intentionis to instill in soldiers and generals an appreciation of onething in particular which is that they may owe a duty of obedienceand allegiance to their commanding officers, and they may owea higher duty of allegiance to the President as Commander in Chief,but at the end of the day their supreme allegiance is to the law,to the Constitution and they may not contravene that document. 
 So I think that is one important and powerful way in which aninstitution which inherently carries the risk of abusing humanrights because it has the power of force is attempting to ensurethat, that force is exercised in a fashion which is disciplinedand consistent with the law.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much Laurie, we really appreciateyour coming.  We will ask Craig Botha, welcome Craig,  if youcould please come up on stage.  Craig is the next speaker thisafternoon.                                                                         Welcome Craig you're welcome to just handlethis session as you wish.

PASTOR BOTHA: Shall I just go ahead and read the statement?

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

PASTOR BOTHA: Thank you and if there are questions afterwardsyou have  ........

CHAIRPERSON: : Certainly thanks.
EX-CONSCRIPTS IN RECONCILIATION PROJECT