White South Africans dodge draft

Press, 21 July 1980, Page 10

White South Africans dodge draft

By

PETER DEELEY

Resistance to the South African war erfort is growing among white m i d d 1 e-class families whose sons are dying in the front line of the escalating military raids into Angola. Publication of the latest list of dead — many of them teen-age conscripts — after another attack on South-west Africa People’s Organisation guerrilla bases has coincided this time with the twice-yearly registration of 16-year-olds for call-up in.two years. While the military command issued communiques which talked in glowing terms of its latest Angola foray, the official casualty list underlined what was for many in the Englishspeaking community the unacceptable face of South African militarism. According to the High Command, 17 men died. Though, names and totals of non-fatal casualties are never issued, it is estimated that three times that numbere were wounded.

Angola and the S.W.A.P.O. leaders have always, maintained that South Africa never reveals its true troop losses. It is. said that casualties are often disguised as accidents and there have been

cases where deaths in the field have been discovered that had never been publicly admitted. Even if the official figures are correct, the last 10 weeks have ■/taken the heaviest toll of SouthAfrican troops in the 14 years of bush war on the Namibia South-west Africa border. More than 50 men have died, bringing the total of deaths in the “operational zone” to 81 this year with .wounded estimated to be about 250. ■ These losses do not bear comparison with. South African military command figures for. nearly 900 S.W.A.P.O, deaths in the same period. But while on an operational .level the South Africans can claim the upper Hand, the psychological impact of the casualty lists is having 'a depressing . effect on the white community. / Only whites are conscripted injto . the Defence Force, although there are volunteer Coloured (mixedrace) . and “ethnic” African battalions. There is some evidence to suggest that ’ non-whites who are picked up for infringements of the law are sometimes given the choice between “volunteering”. and going to jail. Every year about 30,000 young men receive their

call-up notices but an estimated 10, per cent fail to attend initial training. Some get deferment for up to five years for more study but several hundred go abroad as tourists toneighbouring countries and to Western Europe to avoid the draft. How to dodge the callup is now almost as common a topic of debate in white society as rugby. Many parents talk openly of sending their sons out of the country. Some do it by organising study courses at foreign colleges; others try to buy. safe postings for their children. ’lnvestigations have been going on for some time into . allegations that Government clerks were accepting bribes from parents to get their sons in to non-operational units as pay clerks or typists. Few details have been released except to confirm that there have been some "isolated': instances” of bribery. For a few- families, opposition to the war is based on political grounds but for most it is simply a growing concern for their sons’ safety. The death lists -i have brought home to'almost every town and city the reality of South Africa’s political position. V. Though censorship . prohibits'* the publication of information about the war except . from official sources, and criticism is regarded as almost treasonable, it is beginning to surface 'in ways the regime can scarcely stifle. After one deep raid into Angola last month, the war dead included a 19-year-old rifleman from the middle-class suburb of Benoni, near Johannesburg. Asked for a comment, the boy’s father said that to him the real tragedy was that South Africans were being “caught in a web of hatred and grief caused by apartheid.” “I know my son was doing his duty but I cannot condemn the other side,” he said. —- O.F.N.S. Copyright.