End Conscription Campaign
The End Conscription Campaign was an anti-apartheid organisation allied to the United Democratic Front and composed of conscientious objectors and their supporters in South Africa.
The apartheid government had a policy of compulsory conscription for young white men who were expected to perform military service at regular intervals, starting with an extended training which began in the year immediately following the one in which they left school or as soon as they turned 16, whichever came last.
Many were granted deferment, for example to attend University and complete an undergraduate degree first, but very few young men were exempted from conscription for any reason other than being medically unfit or for a race classification error.
Following intense backroom negotiations between Harry Schwarz and Philip Myburg, the Defense Spokesmen of the PFP, the Nationalist Government passed an amendment that introduced a four-year Alternative to Conscription.
The high number of non-reportees was due to many of these immigrants opting to return to their countries of origin rather than do military service, since this opportunity was easily available to them because of their dual citizenship.
In 1987, a group of 23 conscientious objectors from the Universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch, including Cameron Dugmore, then University of Cape Town Students Representative Council Chairperson and Jonathan Handler, South African Union of Jewish Students chairperson, refused to do military service in the South African Defense Force.
The same month, an issue of an alternative newspaper, the Weekly Mail, was confiscated by security police, "on the grounds that it had covered, and therefore promoted, opposition to conscription."
News coverage included a cartoon, an advertisement from War Resisters International, and "a report on 143 men who stated they would never serve in the South African Defence Force.
Saul Batzofin, 27, a member of the End Conscription Campaign, was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment in 1989 for refusing to serve in the South African Defence Force.
During September 1989, thirty Stellenbosch conscientious objectors joined more than 700 listed COs nationwide by publicly refusing to do military service.
However, as of 2015, an alliance led by the African National Congress has reportedly begun pushing for the return of military conscription to the country in a bid to contain youth unemployment and to instill discipline, patriotism and volunteerism into young people from the ages of 18.
African National Congress Secretary General Gwede Mantashe stated he would support the reintroduction of conscription and said that the country had moved away from the system "too soon".
The draft plan still needs to be approved, but if that occurs, young South Africans may be forced to attend a compulsory military programme as soon as 2016.
After the first multi-racial election in 1994, conscription has no longer applied in South Africa and the civilian draft has been exchanged for a professional standing army.
According to a Department of Defence bulletin, dated 10 July 2003, "In essence, this means that if a member has absented himself or herself for a continuous period of thirty days, he or she is automatically discharged from the SANDF.
'The Rising Tide, a song by the popular progressive band Bright Blue was composed in honour of Bruce and the lyrics deal with his stand against conscription into the apartheid military.
Evidence in a Cape Town court in 1988 revealed that the South African Defence Force had been running a disinformation campaign against the ECC.
National Party politicians characterised ECC activists as naive, malevolent in intent, in league with 'communist revolutionaries' and also as sexually deviant (i.e. homosexual) and cowardly.
