TRC Final Report

Volume 4

Chapter 8

Subsection 1

■ THE CONTEXT

Social and political context

6 Drawing on a number of extensive studies of the opinions of white students during the 1980s, Mr Jannie Gagiano of the Department of Political Science, University of Stellenbosch, painted a statistical picture of what he called the “closed socialisation environment” and “the mindset of the typical white conscript”.⁴ He noted that, when the last survey was done in June 1989, the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the African National Congress (ANC) had less than 5 per cent support in white student ranks. Amongst Afrikaans-speaking students, some 25 per cent supported right wing parties, 60 per cent supported the National Party (NP) and 15 per cent supported the Democratic Party (DP). Amongst English speaking students, the same parties received, respectively, around 1 per cent, 18 per cent and 70 per cent of support.

7 The high level of ‘encapsulation’, of living in ‘a sort of cocoon’, is illustrated by figures which showed that less than 13 per cent of Afrikaans students read any English newspapers and less than 10 per cent of English speakers read anything printed in Afrikaans. An even smaller percentage, in either group, read newspapers that were more sympathetic to the liberation movements. The highest reported frequency of any form of political discussion or contact with black students was 8 per cent.

8 The 1989 survey also showed a 60 per cent level of support for what the state and its central institutions stood for and wanted to preserve at that time (about 75 per cent among Afrikaans-speaking students and 52 per cent among English-speaking students). Sixty per cent of students who said they were members of the opposition DP expressed support for repressive action taken by the state against the protest initiatives of the ANC or the UDF. This figure rose to the high eighties amongst Afrikaans-speaking white students.

9 As far as attitudes to conscription and the refusal to do military service were concerned, around 85 per cent of Afrikaner male students and 55 per cent of English-speaking students said that they would never refuse to do military service as a form of political protest. Mr Gagiano also referred to high figures that show that, in 1989, a large majority of white students in South Africa still viewed Communism as a very serious threat.

10 Professor Annette Seegers of the Department of Political Science, University of Cape Town, drew the attention of the Commission to a number of questions which, in her view, still needed to be explored if the “socially pervasive influence” of the national service system in the white community was to be fully understood. She distinguished between:

a factors that influenced people before they entered national service, such as the attitudes of parents and the roles of employers and high schools (specifically the imitation of military service through the cadet system);

b experiences during national service, and

c experiences after national service, such as (in her view) cynicism about public institutions and greater solidarity between Afrikaans and English-speaking people.

11 She emphasised that white men remained involved in the military for a large part of their lives, a point illustrated by this quotation from an earlier analysis⁵:

The relationship between part-time and full-time forces can best be understood in terms of the typical Defence Force career of a white male. All white men must register for military service at sixteen, while still at school. They are then liable for service in the full-time force. Those who do not make a career in the permanent force are required either before or after tertiary education to render two years of national service in one of the five arms of the Defence Force. After this they are placed in the part-time citizen force for twelve years, during which time they must serve up to 720 days in annual thirty-, sixty-, or ninety-day ‘camps’. Then they are placed in the active citizen force reserve for five years and may be required to serve twelve days a year in a local commando until the age of fifty-five. Finally, they are placed on the national reserve until they are sixty-five.