The End Conscription Campaign 1983-1988 : a study of white extra-parliamentary opposition to apartheid
The apartheid state was vulnerable to the opposition of the End Conscription Campaign (ECC) on two fronts. From 1967 universal white male conscription was introduced, and progressively increased until 1984. This indicated the growing threat to the apartheid state from regional decolonisation whic...
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2015
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| Online Access: | Phillips, Merran Willis (2002) The End Conscription Campaign 1983-1988 : a study of white extra-parliamentary opposition to apartheid, University of South Africa, Pretoria, <http://hdl.handle.net/10500/15771> http://hdl.handle.net/10500/15771 |
| Summary: | The apartheid state was vulnerable to the opposition of the End Conscription Campaign (ECC) on
two fronts. From 1967 universal white male conscription was introduced, and progressively
increased until 1984. This indicated the growing threat to the apartheid state from regional
decolonisation which offered bases for the armed liberation movement. From 1977 a policy of
"reformed apartheid" attempted to contain internal black opposition through socio-economic
upliftment, but the failure of this containment intensified the need for military coercion. Minority
conscription created an ongoing manpower challenge, which the ECC exacerbated by making the
costs of conscription explicit, thus encouraging non-compliance and emigration.
Secondly, the National Party used a security discourse to promote unity among whites, offsetting
both its conscription demands and its decreased capacity to win white political support through
socio-economic patronage. After the formation of the Conservative Party in 1982, the state faced
conflicting demands for stability from the right, and for reform from the left. The ECC's opposition
intensified these political differences, and challenged conscription on moral grounds, particularly
the internal deployment of the SADF after 1984.
Through its single-issue focus the ECC was able to sidestep divisions which plagued existing
anti-apartheid opposition, uniting a variety of groups in national campaigns between 1984 and
1988. Since it could not afford to accommodate the ECC's demands, and in view of growing white
acceptance of aspects of the ECC's opposition, the state repressed the ECC to limit its public
impact.
By 1988 - in a climate of growing white discontent around the material and personal costs of
conscription, economic decline, political instability and conscript deaths in Angola - the ECC's
call for alternatives to military conscription encouraged a broader range of anti-conscription
sentiment, prompting the state to ban it. === History === M.A. (History) |
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