This thesis conceptualises compulsory military service and objection to it as public performative acts that generate gendered and political identity. Conscription was the primary performance of citizenship and masculinity for white men in apartheid South Africa. Conscription was also a key governance strategy both in terms of upholding the authority of the state and in engendering discipline in the white population. Objection to military service was therefore a destabilising and transgressive public act. Competing conceptualisations of masculinity and citizenship are inherent in pro and anti-conscription discourses. The refusal to undertake military service places men outside the accepted means of graduating to ' real' manhood and patriotic citizenship. Although objection can be an iconic and transgressive act, objectors have an essentially ambivalent subjectivity in the public realm. Objectors are 'strangers' in a socially constructed and gendered binary of 'insiders' and 'outsiders' . This ambivalent status creates opportunities but also constraints for the performance of objection. The thesis analyses the effectiveness of objectors' performances and argues that there is a distinction between a radical challenge to hegemonic conceptions of militarised masculinity and citizenship and assimilatory challenges. The tension between radicalism and assimilation comes to the fore in response to the state's attacks on objectors. The militarised apartheid state is defined as not only masculine but heteronormative terms and it is the deployment of sexuality that is its most effective means of stigmatising and restricting the performance of objection. The thesis uses interview material, archival data and case studies and concludes that objectors (and their supporters) weaved multiple narratives into their performances but that as the 1980s progressed, the performance of objection to conscription became assimilatory and this demonstrates the heteronormativity of the state, military service and the public realm. / KMBT_363 / Adobe Acrobat 9.54 Paper Capture Plug-in

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)

Text in Afrikaans / Die twee boeke waarin J.J. Collyer die kampanjes in Duits Suidwes-Afrika (Namibie) en Duits Oos-Afrika (Tanzanie) beskryf, bevat enkele kennis stellings wat vandag nog bruikbaar is. Collyer verduidelik dat militere foute van die verlede histories deur die staf ontleed moet word om sodanige foute in die toekoms te vermy. Hy gaan egter verder en verduidelik dat die moontlikheid om toekomsti.ge optrede te verbeter nodig is om onnodige bloedvergieting te verhoed. Hierdie verhandeling het ten doel gehad om die laaste stelling van Collyer te ondersoek en te bepaal of dit wel in Suid-Afrika toegepas is. Die navorsingsprobleem van die verhandeling was om te bepaal ofKrygsgeskiedenis aangewend is om die militere doktrine in Suid-Afrika mee te verbeter. Die bevinding van die verhandeling was dat daar slegs in enkele gevalle deur die SuidAfrikaanse Nasionale Weermag (en sy voorgangers) wel van Krygsgeskiedenis gebruik gemaak was om doktrine mee te ontwikkel en dat baie meer gedoen behoort te word. / The two books of 1.1. Collyer which discuss the campaigns in German South West Africa (Namibia) and German East Africa (Tanzania) contain knowledge propositions that are still valid today. Collyer explains that the military mistakes that were made in the past should be analysed especially by the staff today to prevent making the same mistakes in the future. He goes on to explain that future conduct should be improved in order to prevent unnecessary bloodshed. This dissertation's aim was to investigate Collyer's proposition and to determine whether this was applied in South Africa. The research problem of the dissertation was to determine whether Military History was utilised to improve South Africa's military doctrine. The finding of the dissertation was that the South African National Defence Force (and its predecessors) utilised Military History only in very few cases to develop doctrine and that much remains to be done. / Political Sciences

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)

Text in Afrikaans / Die twee boeke waarin J.J. Collyer die kampanjes in Duits Suidwes-Afrika (Namibie) en Duits Oos-Afrika (Tanzanie) beskryf, bevat enkele kennis stellings wat vandag nog bruikbaar is. Collyer verduidelik dat militere foute van die verlede histories deur die staf ontleed moet word om sodanige foute in die toekoms te vermy. Hy gaan egter verder en verduidelik dat die moontlikheid om toekomsti.ge optrede te verbeter nodig is om onnodige bloedvergieting te verhoed. Hierdie verhandeling het ten doel gehad om die laaste stelling van Collyer te ondersoek en te bepaal of dit wel in Suid-Afrika toegepas is. Die navorsingsprobleem van die verhandeling was om te bepaal ofKrygsgeskiedenis aangewend is om die militere doktrine in Suid-Afrika mee te verbeter. Die bevinding van die verhandeling was dat daar slegs in enkele gevalle deur die SuidAfrikaanse Nasionale Weermag (en sy voorgangers) wel van Krygsgeskiedenis gebruik gemaak was om doktrine mee te ontwikkel en dat baie meer gedoen behoort te word. / The two books of 1.1. Collyer which discuss the campaigns in German South West Africa (Namibia) and German East Africa (Tanzania) contain knowledge propositions that are still valid today. Collyer explains that the military mistakes that were made in the past should be analysed especially by the staff today to prevent making the same mistakes in the future. He goes on to explain that future conduct should be improved in order to prevent unnecessary bloodshed. This dissertation's aim was to investigate Collyer's proposition and to determine whether this was applied in South Africa. The research problem of the dissertation was to determine whether Military History was utilised to improve South Africa's military doctrine. The finding of the dissertation was that the South African National Defence Force (and its predecessors) utilised Military History only in very few cases to develop doctrine and that much remains to be done. / Political Sciences