Out of Step: War Resistance in South Africa

ISBN: 9781852870539

Catholic Institute for International Relations, January 1989

Paperback, 140 pages

From the age of 18, every white South African male is called up for military service: the penalty fr refusing is six years' jail. End Conscription Campaign (ECC) and the young men who, in growing numbers, are refusing to be conscripted. As South African military power and aggression grw in the 1970s, some young soldiers began to realise they were defending apartheid injustice. When resistance erupted in South Africa;s black townships in 1984, conscripts found themselves face to face with fellow South Africans. Now it was a civil war. The ECC and its young supporters brought a special brand of creative campaigning to the broad anti-aprtheid struggle while walking a legal tightrope. The ranks if conscientious objectors swelled; so did popular support for the ECC. The ECC was banned in 1988; by then, was resistance had come to stay.