I could tell you anything I liked about the moment I made that decision.
I am the blogger; you are the bloggee. So you are obliged to accept my version of the truth.
I could tell you it was a political epiphany – that I realised at that very instant that I was nothing more than a tool of the apartheid military machine, that I was suddenly overwhelmed by an unbearable shame, that I resolved immediately to forswear obedience to the evil racist empire, to heed the examples of Mao and Che and Gandhi and Mandela and to commit myself henceforth to the struggle against oppression in the world in general and in South Africa in particular.
I could tell you that I decided then and there to become a conscientious objector, that I stood up and limped to HQ, demanded an interview with the Commanding Officer, declared my opposition to conscription, proffered my hands for the obligatory cuffs, and resigned myself to two years of abuse in prison. Object to this, kaffirboetie!
But that was never on the cards. My two older brothers had done their military service, admittedly in the navy, at Simonstown and
So the family view was very straightforward. You did your military service and you got on with your life. Politics didn’t enter into it. My brothers told me the meaning of vasbyt and min dae. They weren’t there when I got on the train to
And there was another thing. We knew that military service was the price we paid for the privilege of being white. The umfaans we grew up with on the farm didn’t have to do it. They didn’t even have to go to school. Somehow, in the back of our minds, we accepted it as a reasonable trade-off: a year of pain for a lifetime of special rights, like voting, and living wherever we liked, and getting good jobs that would pay for nice cars and houses and swimming pools. So we went obediently, like pigs to the bacon factory, as penance, or expiation.
I could tell you another version, the one that worked for Howard B.
The madness strategy.
4 comments:
Fuck Aubrey Levine... I wonder if my faithful 'supplier', "Steps" is still chasing elephants on the 'Rhodesian' side.
B"H
Was in Greefswald July 1971-Feb1972.Would like to join Greefswald Old Boys.Thanks for your amazing blogs .
can be contacted at benyaminben@hotmail.com.
take care
benjy
I think I am getting old..cannot remember the guys names from July 73 to Feb 74?
I was there july 73 my name is James Els
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