Note taking

Nayef_222

Rethinking_the_Man_Question_Sex_Gender_and_Violenc..._----_Six_Contesting_the_masculine_state_.pdf

Home >Political Science homework help >Note taking

SIX | Contesting the masculine state D A N I E L C O N W AY

I have a huge problem that I cannot talk to anyone about. I tried talk

ing to my father and he got so angry with me, I thought he might actu

ally hit me. I do not want to go into the army … all my friends seem to

be looking forward to going into the army. I certainly can’t discuss it

with them. I feel terribly isolated, like I don’t belong anywhere. It’s not

because I’m a coward.

The [Johannesburg] Star replies: Cowardice has nothing to do with

conscientious objection to doing military service. Contact the End

Conscription Campaign at 011 337 6796. (Letters to the Editor, The

Star, 12 September 1987)

Asking the man question in a society where compulsory allmale military

conscription is standard inevitably requires interrogating how masculini

ties are militarized and how militaries are masculinized. A militarized

state devotes considerable cultural, legal and discursive resources to

perpetuating the militarization of masculinities. Men who feel anxious

about serving, who consider it a waste of time or see it as an abuse of

state power, are likely made to feel they are unreasonable, ‘unmanly’

and subversive. Exploring the impact of this gender dissidence allows

an analysis of Cynthia Enloe’s insight that ‘if a state’s military begins to

lose legitimacy, the tension between masculinity and military service can

become acute’ (1993: 54). In 1980s apartheid South Africa, two years of

fulltime compulsory conscription existed for all white men and this was

followed by a fifteenyear period of alternateyear ‘camp duty’.1 Tensions

between masculinity and military service emerged when a small number

of white men publicly rejected compulsory conscription. They were then

joined by white men and women who established a war resistance and

antiapartheid movement called the End Conscription Campaign (ECC).

Objection to military service for expressly political reasons reflected

deeper cultural shifts and widening divisions in South Africa’s white

community (Phillips 2002: 224; Charney 1987) and demonstrated how

the contradictory pressures of militarization on a society can provoke

Rethinking the Man Question : Sex, Gender and Violence in International Relations, edited by Jane L. Parpart, and Doctor Marysia Zalewski, Zed Books, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/westminster/detail.action?docID=368677. Created from westminster on 2020-11-16 11:48:41.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 00

8. Z

ed B

oo ks

. A ll

rig ht

s re

se rv

ed .

Six 128

profound political change. The analysis of the war resistance movement

in South Africa reveals the possibilities and constraints for contesting and

destabilizing dominant militarized gender norms and contesting racist

and authoritarian rule. The use of sexist and homophobic discourses

to stigmatize objectors and their supporters demonstrated the hetero

normativity of the public realm, and the dilemma of how to transgress

such stigmatization confronts peace activists across contexts. The case

study of war resistance in apartheid South Africa and the cultures of

mascu linity that underpinned it resonate with social practices in con

temporary militarized societies such as in Israel and Turkey. This chapter

will begin by theoretically conceptualizing conscription and political

objection to it as ‘performative’ (Butler 1999) acts generative of indi

vidual and collective identity. I will move on to analyse the discursive

and material means by which the apartheid state militarized masculinity;

and finally I will conceptualize and assess resistance to conscription in

South Africa.

Militarizing masculinities

Conscription and objection to military service are performative prac

tices generative of individual and collective subjectivities. These sub

jectivities, however, are ‘produced in the complex interplay of discourse,

norms, power relations, institutions and practices’ (Lloyd 2005: 27). In

militarized cultures, such practices intersect with multiple discourses

and occur on multiple levels. In South Africa, conscription became a

normative practice generative of masculinity and citizenship and was

engendered by practices such as cadet duty at school, valorizing sport

and the male physique, and by gendered nationalist and cold war dis

courses in the public realm (Cock and Nathan 1989; Du Pisani 2004).

White men engaged with these militarized masculinities and practices at

school, on the sports pitch, in the family, in the military, and in the wider

public realm (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). There was, however,

a simultaneous resistance to and contestation of these practices and

norms. The refusal to serve as a soldier in a conscript army on grounds

of conscience, particularly when this relates to political and moral beliefs,

is a powerful and transgressive performative practice in the public realm.

It is, however, a practice that is ambivalent. Objection to military service,

from one perspective, is an alternative ‘narrative of citizenship’ to that

offered by the state (Carver 1998: 15) and one that challenges ‘the halo

of sanctity surrounding war and military service’ (Helman 1999: 46).

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 00

8. Z

ed B

oo ks

. A ll

rig ht

s re

se rv

ed .

Contesting the masculine state 129

Objectors make claims to embody true patriotism, civic duty, heroism,

sacrifice and other normative practices of masculinity, norms that the

state claims legitimacy to define. In this contestation, there are pressures

to assimilate or be subverted by state vilification. Burk notes that many

objectors’ goal is to at once ‘protest and to maintain the respect of larger

society’ (1995: 511). Therefore, they must avoid, in Burk’s terms, becoming

exiles from the political community (ibid.: 511).The need to be ‘taken

seriously’ and perceived as ‘respectable’, in order to avoid ‘exile’, places

gendered pressures on objectors and can limit the transformative nature

of objection as a performative act. The analysis below demonstrates

that objectors and peace activists in apartheid South Africa were acutely

subject to these pressures.

A politics of masculinity had always been at the centre of white

nationbuilding in South Africa, and militarization was a critical pro cess

in mediating the heterogeneous white community. The experience of

military defeat and humiliation by the Afrikaansspeaking population

in the Boer War was of profound significance in creating suspicion of

Englishspeaking whites and engendered a need to reclaim honour,

heroism and strength (Du Pisani 2004). Englishspeaking whites (some

40 per cent of the white community) were largely hostile towards National

Party (NP) rule during the 1950s; but a combination of rising prosperity,

electoral gerrymandering by the NP and disintegration of parliamentary

opposition led to increased acceptance of and complicity in apartheid.

Nevertheless, the unity of the white nation was never assured. The South

African Defence Force’s (SADF) role in mediating these divisions and

symbolizing an ideational white unity and resolve was paramount. The

institution of conscription became a primary location where white men

from different linguistic, class and national groups mixed (Seegers 1987:

160). The presumed masculine camaraderie of service aimed to forge

white national bonds, and the public image of the white male conscript

symbolized white South Africa’s apparent unity and resolve. Therefore,

conscription was a primary means by which the ‘imagined community’

(Anderson 2006) of the white nation was generated. Nevertheless, opposi

tion to conscription in the 1980s reflected these historical divisions and

was centred on Englishspeaking universities, in the Englishspeaking

churches, through the Englishmedium press, and in business interests.

The linguistic, social and economic divisions in the white community and

the iconic, individual and communal practice of allmale military service

made the state exceptionally sensitive to individual or collective acts of war

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 00

8. Z

ed B

oo ks

. A ll

rig ht

s re

se rv

ed .

Six 130

resistance. The extent of South Africa’s militarization made opposition to

conscription a difficult and rare social phenomenon but conversely made

the act of objection iconic and destabilizing when it did occur.

The ideological outlook, discourse and personnel of the NP, SADF and

South African state had coalesced by the 1980s.2 It would be incorrect,

however, to assume that war resisters faced a rigid monolith of milita

rized masculinity when opposing the South African state. Indeed, the

apartheid state was a conglomerate of shifting, sometimes contradictory

and surprising, discourses of masculinity and sexuality. At the centre of

this ‘uneasy and messy alliance’ (MacInnes 1998: 15) of masculinist dis

courses was the act of conscription. The importance placed on white men

serving in the military and being publicly acknowledged as conscripts,

however, never wavered. The state’s shifts in rhetorical emphasis and

articulation, or to borrow Hooper’s terms the ‘plundering’ (2001: 62) of

hitherto ‘deviant’ tropes of masculinity and sexuality as a justification

for conscription were aimed at the ‘rejuvenation’ (ibid.: 62) of the state’s

norms of masculinity, which were centred on maintaining the legiti

macy of conscription. An analysis of the state’s evolving and conflicting

articulation of militarized masculinities reveals the highly bound and

hostile public realm in which objectors had to operate. Also, the cultural

impact of war resistance was seen to have threatened (or to potentially

threaten) the state. Militarized ‘hybrid’ (Demetriou 2001: 349) tropes of

masculinities emerged as the circumstances of the state changed, the

impact of war resistance was gauged, or the different institutions of the

state contradicted one another.

At the centre of the cultural production of militarized masculinities

was the iconography of the white male conscript. The need for white

public complicity with conscription infused NP leaders’ rhetoric and

South African popular culture. A significant discourse of aspirational

militarized masculinity was that of the hypermasculine grensvegter

(border fighter). The grensvegter was essentially a man who had seen

combat against Cuban and Angolan troops in the war on the Namibian/

Angolan border. The grensvegter iconography emphasized the adventure

and raw masculinity of military service and drew from the Hollywood

Rambo imagery of anticommunist guerrilla warfare (Conway 2007).

Alongside the hard imagery of the grensvegter was that of the troepie

(or troopie). The troepie embraced conscripts as the collective sons of

white South Africa. One could purchase troepie cuddly toys, and the

Afrikaans popular song ‘Troepie Doepie’ defined this trope of masculin

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 00

8. Z

ed B

oo ks

. A ll

rig ht

s re

se rv

ed .

Contesting the masculine state 131

ity as affectionately regarded rather than revered and hypermasculine

(Drewett 2003). The troepie metaphor was particularly emphasized when

addressing white women’s involvement in militarization. The women of

the Southern Cross Fund, a white women’s group established to support

SADF troops, emphasized men as troepies: sons, husbands and brothers

deserving the motherly support of South African women (Conway 2007).

The need to appeal to all white South African men and define service in

the SADF as a positive, masculinizing rite of passage, regardless of a man’s

subjectivities, meant that the tropes of masculinity militarized in state

and popular cultural discourse were broad and malleable. The SADF’s

official magazine, Paratus, was on sale to the South African public and

served as a key medium by which the state advocated the benefits and

importance of military service. Paratus featured a ‘National Serviceman

of the Month’ column. The men featured in this column were seldom

either Afrikaansspeaking or the idealized grensvegter found elsewhere

in South African popular culture. Among the ‘National Servicemen of

the Month’ highlighted in Paratus were a surfer, a gay novelist, a fashion

designer, a singer, an actor and a photographer. They were all portrayed

as having developed their skills while in the SADF and as performing a

valuable role in the military (March 1987: 62; April 1983: 60; October

1987: 26; January 1986: 69; October 1985: 61; October 1983: 77). The

fact that the men were conscripts enabled them to transmute and hone

their masculine subjectivities to the needs of the SADF. Had a fashion

designer, author and surfer not been conscripts, their masculinity would

have been relegated to marginal status, so the practice of military service

transformed this. The men could be acknowledged as true men and

patriotic citizens. Research in contemporary Israel also supports the

notion that individual men experience the benefits of public acknowledge

ment and esteem by wearing the uniform of a conscript and participating

in a collective national endeavour, regardless of their other gendered

subjectivities: ‘The way people look at you on the bus,’ remarked one

of Kaplan and BenAri’s gay male informants, ‘the fact that suddenly

you are a soldier, that suddenly you are something’ (2000: 408). Munn

also documents in this volume how gay men can participate in and

valorize conflict and nationalist practices. The idealized masculinity of

the South African conscript resonated across popular, legal and political

discourses. These discourses were broad and malleable, however, and

this was testimony to the vital need for all white South African men to

participate and be seen participating in the SADF.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 00

8. Z

ed B

oo ks

. A ll

rig ht

s re

se rv

ed .

Six 132

Iconic objection It is unsurprising that, given the considerable ‘ideological state appara

tus’ devoted to engendering consent for and participation in the military,

the majority of white men ‘complied’ with duty (Althusser 1971: 136–45;

Cock 1989: 9). Indeed, even at the height of the ECC’s activism, the

organization concluded that ‘the bulk of the white community remains

antagonised by a campaign which is seen to threaten their protected

position in society’ (Moll 1985: 57). This in itself makes the stand taken

by a small number of individual male objectors to military service and

the larger number of men and women who supported them in the ECC

all the more remarkable. Despite only a handful of public political objec

tors throughout the 1980s, the selfnarratives and performative acts of

individual objection were as iconoclastic as the imagery of the serving

conscript. The Englishspeaking press, in particular, closely followed

the criminal trials of political objectors in apartheid South Africa. The

personalities and life stories of the individual objectors became the cen

tral focus of the war resisters’ campaigning message, and the eventual

imprisonment of objectors was portrayed as a form of sacrifice akin to

martyrdom. Martyrdom, as a sacrifice for the common good, invoked and

imitated the sacrifice soldiers supposedly made on behalf of and for the

sake of the nation (Elshtain 1995: 202). The objector David Bruce told

the court during his trial,

I am prepared to fight in defence of the people of South Africa. Going

to jail is like reporting for service. By taking this stand I am trying to

say I am prepared to shoulder the responsibility that falls on young

men who sacrifice their lives, I have no contempt for the job that

soldiers do. By being in the army it can mean death, but I am not trying

to avoid this – I accept that we must defend our people but I cannot do

this under this present system of government. (Weekly Mail, 10 June

1988)

Bruce invoked the militarized symbolism of ‘manly’ selfsacrifice for the

greater good and yet sought to subvert and reconfigure the concept of

sacrifice in antiapartheid and anticonscription terms. Ivan Toms, who

was imprisoned some months after David Bruce, remarked upon the

individual resonance of ‘martyrdom’ as symbolizing a challenge to the

state and the wider citizenry at the time of his objection:

Some people see me as a traitor, but some white men consider my

stand a real challenge. I have often been told by young white men that

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 00

8. Z

ed B

oo ks

. A ll

rig ht

s re

se rv

ed .

Contesting the masculine state 133

they support what I have been doing and respect me, but that they

could not do it themselves. At the same time they are thankful that I

am doing it, almost on their behalf. (South, 10 March 1988)

The presence of individual white men refusing to serve in the military

and presenting themselves as true symbols of the nation and their duty

were acutely threatening the delicate conglomeration that was white

South Africa. It was for this reason that war resistance in apartheid South

Africa had a far greater power than their physical numbers would imply.

Individual objectors performed a political identity that was iconic, moral

and powerful. Indeed, individual objection continued after the ECC was

banned in 1988 and constituted the primary focus of anticonscription

campaigns.

At the centre of individual objectors’ selfnarratives was the concept

of having made a ‘break’ from white society. ECC activist Janet Cherry

explained, ‘we all go through a process, to some extent, of breaking away

from our backgrounds and our parents and from our very sheltered up

bringing, and we felt it was incredibly important that people made that

break’ (cited in Frederickse 1990: 214). This ‘break’ was most vividly em

bodied by male objectors as a rejection of the practice of conscription and

an opposition to the conflation of masculinity/patriotism with military

service. As such, objectors could be said to have performed Connell’s

advocacy of the ‘renunciation’ of dominant cultures of masculinity as

a precursor for creating and advocating new selves that effectively chal

lenge the existing content and accepted practices of the status quo (1995:

130). An early ECC campaign, which encapsulated this, involved three

individual objectors fasting in Cape Town cathedral. Articulating the anti

conscription message using a fast was explained by Richard Steele:

A radical stopping, stepping out and becoming aware of the way we

live our lives. We are socialised to follow certain habits. If you’re able

to step out of that habit, even for 24 hours, it gives you a chance to

look at the other habit you are following … We are focusing on the

SADF, because they are focusing on us, on our lives. (Weekly Mail, 27

September 1985)

Making a ‘break’ from mainstream white society was inevitable if one

were to refuse to serve in the SADF.

The breach white male objectors had made enabled new and trans

gressive subjectivities to enter the public realm and destabilize militarized

masculinities. Primarily, objectors’ selfnarratives were premised on the

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 00

8. Z

ed B

oo ks

. A ll

rig ht

s re

se rv

ed .

Six 134

claim that it was they who were empowered by their act of objection and

that conscripts were in fact disempowered and trapped by military ser

vice. The ‘empowerment’ narrative of objection was reflexively developed

according to the individual objector’s life history, and it formed a critical

part of his public narrative of objection. This selfreflexive knowledge was

developed by encountering and rejecting militarized masculine norms in

school, the army, or from a deeper cultural awareness drawn from Chris

tianity, Judaism or the objector’s own masculine or sexual identity. This

selfnarrative challenged the state’s fundamental contention that military

service was the only practice that empowered men as individuals and

as a group. Many objectors considered their selfreflexivity and attitude

towards conscription as a privilege that was denied other white South

African men. Indeed, David Bruce, whose Judaism and family experiences

in Nazi Germany were decisive to his decision to object, considered that

he was ‘fortunate that I had that instinct. It was a kind of gift, a kind

of blessing almost, that it enabled me to see’ (interview with author, 12

September 2002). This was a striking observation to make, given that the

state constructed military service, not objection, as a ‘privilege’ for young

men. Charles Bester, who attended Grey College in Bloemfontein, also

rejected the hegemonic culture of his school and considered it decisive

in his moulding as an objector:

I didn’t have a very happy time at Grey College, I left a year later and as

I was leaving the deputy headmaster heard I was leaving and in fact I

left midweek, that’s how I felt about the whole thing. I did try to ex

plain why I was leaving this school … I said, ‘Well, I hate having to have

hair inspections,’ which seemed quite trivial but it was trying to say

something about the things that lay behind them and he said, ‘Well,

what will you do when you go into the army?’, because obviously in the

army you were going to have your hair cut … that connection was made

and that was the first doubts I had and from there it was a process.

(Interview with author, 13 September 2003)

This ‘process’ of coming to selfawareness and taking the final decision

to object was influenced by the resistance to dominant norms in school

which were replicated in wider society. Objectors articulated and devel

oped ‘hidden transcripts’ (Cornwall and Lindisfarne 1994: 24) gained

from their life histories and alternative practices of masculinity and

citizenship. Just as militarism could become engendered by everyday

practices, such as those at school, so could it be resisted.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 00

8. Z

ed B

oo ks

. A ll

rig ht

s re

se rv

ed .

Contesting the masculine state 135

Bosbefok masculinities The militarization of South Africa placed extraordinary stresses on

white society and upon white men, in particular. As the 1980s progressed,

the war on the Namibian/Angolan border escalated and conscripts were

sent into South African black townships as rebellion spread across the

republic. These developments increased the amount of time conscripts

spent in active combat and led to a rising white casualty rate. The inter

national outrage provoked by South Africa’s militarily aggressive stance

undermined white economic confidence and made the state appear

beleaguered and isolated. Mann notes that although militarization may

appear allencompassing and unassailable, ‘If the nation is called to real

sacrifice, we see that its militarism is not rooted deep; if living standards

in a militarised society begin to fall, or should “our boys” be perceived

to be “pointlessly sacrificed”, militarism is profoundly threatened’ (1987:

49). White political unity began to fragment in response to these multiple

stresses, and the social and psychological evidence of the damaging

effects of sustained military combat began to emerge. The ECC’s effi

cacy was not in mobilizing mass resistance against conscription but

in highlighting conscription as a source of growing political, economic

and social crisis for white South Africans (Phillips 2002: 224). As the

1980s progressed, disturbing evidence began to emerge about the effects

of military service on young white men and wider white South African

culture. Indeed, white male suicide rates, instances of interpersonal

violence and the phenomenon of ‘family murder’, whereby white men

would inexplicably murder their families and then commit suicide, were

among the highest in the world (Marks and Andersson 1990: 61). In 1987,

General Malan, the minister of defence, told parliament that 326 national

servicemen had attempted suicide during the previous year (18 killed

themselves, as opposed to 116 who died in military operations over the

same period) (MacLennan, Saturday Star, 22 February 1987). The reality

of these developments began to influence white popular culture. The

slang word bosbefok (bush fucked/bush mad) entered common currency

as a term of abuse; yet its origins were influenced by the symptoms

of PostTraumatic Stress Disorder exhibited by troops who had served

on the Namibian/Angolan border (Thompson and Branford 1994: 100).

The metaphor of ‘bush fucked’ contested the army as a masculinizing

experience. It destabilized the tropes of militarized masculinity embodied

by the grensvegter and troepie; men were ‘fucked’ by military service,

demeaned and driven ‘mad’ as a result.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 00

8. Z

ed B

oo ks

. A ll

rig ht

s re

se rv

ed .

Six 136

These cultural shifts were capitalized on by the ECC as an organiza

tion. The ECC, as a new social movement, became a subcultural space

in white South Africa and developed a particular and transgressive cam

paigning style from the outset. Using satirical art forms that would be

readily identifiable to its youthful target audience and popular music

to transmit its message, the ECC developed a significant following on

Englishspeaking university campuses and in the trendy bars of Cape

Town, Johannesburg, Durban and Grahamstown. Many activists also

recall being part of the movement as a fun and enjoyable experience.

ECC leader Laurie Nathan explained to the Truth and Reconciliation

Commission that he believed conscripts were ‘both victims and perpetra

tors’ and this influenced ECC campaigns (TRC 1997). The ECC frequently

used imagery of men being tied up, restricted and restrained in many

of its posters; and some images vividly showed men being turned into

animals and monsters by being forced into SADF uniforms. In this way,

the imagery of the heroic grensvegter and affectionately regarded troepie

was contested; and the white press and even, in 1988, the once ultra

loyal Dutch Reformed Church began to question the continued use of

conscripts to fight apartheid’s war. The ECC was also a forum where

wider critiques of South African society were debated and a multiracial,

democratic future was discussed and advocated. The movement’s female

members, who comprised over 50 per cent of the ECC’s membership,

conducted considerable feminist debates about the nature of patriarchy in

South Africa and about the ECC as an organization. The ECC addressed

white women as mothers, wives and girlfriends of conscripts (in similar

terms to those of the state) and did so with the aim of further destabi

lizing militarized masculinity and women’s role in sustaining it.3 The

ECC contested militarized mascu linities and sought to reformulate them

using popular culture and focusing on a practice that was damaging the

psychological, physical and economic wellbeing of increasing numbers

of men who were undertaking it.

Response and compromise

The state responded to objectors and the ECC with vitriol and punitive

measures. Indeed, the ECC was banned in 1988. The state’s attempts to

discredit objectors and maintain the legitimacy of conscription were,

however, problematic (Conway 2008). The iconic status of individual

objectors and the skill with which the ECC used popular culture to develop

antimilitarist discourses, already emergent in white society, meant that

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 00

8. Z

ed B

oo ks

. A ll

rig ht

s re

se rv

ed .

Contesting the masculine state 137

the state struggled to present objectors and their supporters as danger

ous enemies of the republic. If anything, the trial and imprisonment of

individual objectors created evergreater public concern and sympathy

for objectors and caused embarrassment for the legal establishment

and the SADF (ibid.). Police harassment and legal restrictions undoubt

edly damaged the ECC’s ability to operate. The state also sought to

acutely stigmatize objectors and their supporters using homophobic

innuendo (ibid.). The branding of objectors as cowardly and sexually

‘deviant’ sought to neutralize objectors’ political message and ensure

that the state maintained control of defining and militarizing tropes

of gender. Whereas the state sought to incorporate hitherto ‘deviant’

tropes of masculinity and sexuality in Paratus magazine, it did so only

in relation to the practice of military service. To not serve in the SADF

resulted in the state projecting sexual and gendered ‘deviance’ on to the

resisting subject. What is significant is that this homophobic stigmatiza

tion impacted on the ECC’s campaigning style and on the content of its

message. Ivan Toms, a gay objector, was dissuaded from incorporating

his sexuality into his public act of objection. Toms was presented by the

ECC as a ‘typical’ white man – a good Christian, a former army officer,

and a man who had been captain of his school’s rugby team (Conway

2004). In 1987, the ECC conducted survey and focus group research

among serving conscripts and concluded the following:

ECC is seen as ‘studenty’, cliquish and elitist … A most serious factor

undermining ECC is its ‘arrogance’ in commenting on the army when

so many of its publicly identified members have not done military

service. This applies as much to men who haven’t served as it does to

women and older folk who don’t face call ups. Those with most cred

ibility in the ECC are the campers [men who had completed the initial

period of fulltime conscription and were eligible for ongoing ‘camp

duty’] and the objectors who have been to jail. ECC needs to be repre

sented publicly by a greater number of campers to avoid the perception

amongst soldiers that ‘it doesn’t know what the fuck it is talking

about’. Women and older folk who speak on ECC’s behalf should talk

about how they are affected by militarisation and conscription. Many

soldiers believe that the ECC sees them as ‘the enemy’. (ECC, Cape

Town Conscripts Group, October 1987 [Catteneo Collection])

It is significant that objectors who had been to jail were considered

to have legitimacy similar to that of SADF former conscripts. This was

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 00

8. Z

ed B

oo ks

. A ll

rig ht

s re

se rv

ed .

Six 138

indicative of the masculine symbolism shared between soldiering and

objection as a performative act. The desire to be ‘taken seriously’ by

serving conscripts, however, and the need to appear ‘respectable’ in

mainstream white society, increasingly dictated the style and content

of the ECC’s campaigns. There is no doubt that the increased concern

for what serving conscripts ‘thought’ about objectors and the ECC caused

controversy within the movement. The ECC also became significantly

more conservative than antiwar movements in the Vietnamera USA and

at Greenham Common in the 1980s (Suran 2001). One could argue that

this was the inevitable result of the militarized and punitive ‘conditions

of operation’ in white South Africa (Foucault 1969: 117). It does, however,

pose the question of whether the ECC sought to assimilate with main

stream norms to the extent of damaging the movement’s radicalism.

Conclusion

This chapter has explored the fluidity of masculinism and mascu

linities and the importance of policing boundaries to maintain the link

between masculinism and power. This is not a literal conflation of men

and power, but masculinist authority/hegemonic masculinity and power.

Donovan argues, ‘collective attempts to transform masculinity warrant

the attention of profeminist men and women’ (Donovan 1998: 817).

White men who publicly refused to serve in the apartheid army exposed

the vulnerability of militarized, masculinist and raced state projects.

Indeed, the men’s whiteness in itself became a transgressive dynamic

of their performance of objection. The end of compulsory conscription

was concurrent with the liberation of South Africa in 1994. A ceasefire in

the Namibian border war had occurred in 1988, followed by Namibian

independence from South African rule in 1990. A loss of white public

support and the open criticism of South Africa’s use of conscripts in the

war had been instrumental in provoking the ceasefire (Conway 2007;

Wood 1991: 751). This was a dramatic shift in white public opinion

from just a few years earlier (Geldenhuys 1982). The activities of the

ECC and the public stand taken by white male objectors had helped

highlight and exacerbate the stresses that advanced militarization had

placed on white South Africans. Indeed, across comparative contexts,

the transgressive potential of individual objectors to military service was

acknowledged by Helman, who argues that if war is no longer ‘consid

ered a collective effort’ because objectors have appropriated the state’s

‘hitherto exclusive prerogative’ to define security and national duty, then

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 00

8. Z

ed B

oo ks

. A ll

rig ht

s re

se rv

ed .

Contesting the masculine state 139

the individual objector has ‘opened the door to challenging the state’s

demands of the individual’ (Helman 1999: 59). The notion of military

service as the only acceptable practice of masculinity and citizenship

for white South African men was destabilized by individual objectors in

iconic terms that mirrored the performative norms, such as embodying

publicly acknowledgeable acts of duty, sacrifice and honour, of actual

serving troops. This posed significant problems for the state, which was

already increasingly mired in a deepening war and a crisis of domestic

and international legitimacy.

The state’s conflation of heteronormativity and military masculinities,

however, despite the incorporation of ‘deviant’ tropes of masculinity

to engender widespread consent, allowed it to use homophobia and

misogyny to stigmatize objectors, and in particular their supporters in

the ECC. The ECC found countering this homophobic discourse dif

ficult and sought to assimilate their challenge to the state’s militarized

gender norms within a heteronormative framework. This South African

case study demonstrates the effect individual acts of resistance can have

in destabilizing militarization and the gendered norms that underpin

it. Objectors performatively challenged dominant tropes of militarized

masculinity by their public refusal to serve in the army and sought to

subvert and reformulate normative values such as honour, duty, bravery

and sacrifice. The analysis of the ECC, however, also raises the perpetual

dilemma peace activists face when seeking to be taken ‘seriously’ by

society at large and to sidestep the state’s gendered and sexualized taunts.

Phelan contends that if stigmatized social actors do not challenge norma

tive constructions of ‘respectability’, then ‘their attempts at social change

will operate only at the more superficial level of discursive consciousness

without transforming the more basic structures of identity that shape our

reactions to the world’ (Phelan 1999: 89). It is in assessing peace activists

and objectors’ responses to being ‘taken seriously’ and respected that

one can assess war resistance as a performative and transgressive act.

Notes 1 ‘Camp duty’ consisted of a

period of three months’ military training completed in alternate years for twelve years subsequent to fulltime conscript duty. ‘Camp duty’ could also involve active service on the Namibian border, in Angola and

in the South African black townships. 2 The NP had narrowly won office

in 1948 and immediately set about entrenching its power base. The NP ‘early used legal and extralegal means to increase their own majority and to hinder the effectiveness of

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 00

8. Z

ed B

oo ks

. A ll

rig ht

s re

se rv

ed .

Six 140

opposition groups inside and outside parliament, to eliminate dissent, and to emphasise conformity’ (Rotberg 1987: 79). The removal of English speaking senior officers in the SADF and their replacement by Afrikaans speaking NP sympathizers was also a priority. The SADF’s political status and influence increased considerably under the premiership (and later presidency) of P. W. Botha. Botha, a former minister of defence, strongly identified with the armed forces and appointed the former chief of the SADF, General Magnus Malan, as minister of defence.

3 The South African minister of defence threatened to ban any further publication of such inter views. Women in the ECC primarily addressed the South African public as wives and mothers of conscripts, particularly after 1987 (as reflected in the ‘give our sons a choice’ cam paign), and sought to destabilize militarized motherhood and high light white women’s role in fostering militarized masculinities. In Conway (2007) I write of how popular women’s magazines in South Africa began to write of mothers’ criticisms of the state’s use of the military in response to their sons’ deaths in the ‘Operational Zone’ in Namibia and Angola from early 1987 onwards. The women’s activism in the ECC clearly highlighted and encouraged white mothers’ unease and increasing hostility towards conscription, but also reflected a shift in focus for women in the ECC, who had hitherto resisted being defined as wives and mothers.

References Althusser, L. (1971) Lenin and Philo-

sophy and Other Essays, trans. B. Brewster, London: NLB.

Anderson, B. (2006) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso.

Burk, J. (1995) ‘Citizenship status and military service: the question for inclusion by minorities and conscientious objectors’, Armed Forces & Society, 21(4): 503–29.

Butler, J. (1999) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York and London: Routledge.

Carver, T. (1998) ‘Sexual citizenship: gendered and degendered narra tives’, in T. Carver and V. Mottier (eds), Politics of Sexuality: Identity, Gender, Citizenship, London and New York: Routledge.

Charney, C. (1987) ‘The National Party, 1982–1985: a class alliance in crisis’, in W. James (ed.), The State of Apartheid, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.

Cock, J. (1989) ‘Conscription in South Africa: a study in the politics of coercion’, South African Socio- logical Review, 2(1): 1–22.

Cock, J. and L. Nathan (eds) (1989) War and Society: The Militarisation of South Africa, Cape Town: David Philip.

Connell, R. (1995) Masculinities, Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univer sity of California Press.

Connell, R. and J. Messerschmidt (2005) ‘Hegemonic masculinity: rethinking the concept’, Gender and Society, 19(6): 829–59.

Conway, D. (2004) ‘“Every Coward’s Choice”? Political objection to

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 00

8. Z

ed B

oo ks

. A ll

rig ht

s re

se rv

ed .

Contesting the masculine state 141

military service in apartheid South Africa as sexual citizenship’, Citizenship Studies, 8(1): 25–45.

— (2007) ‘“Somewhere on the border – of credibility”: the cultural construction and contestation of “the border” in white south African Society’, in P. Vale and G. Baines (eds), Bounded States and Border Wars: Southern Africa and the Cold War, Pretoria: University of South Africa Press.

— (2008) ‘The masculine state in crisis: state response to war resistance in apartheid South Africa’, Men and Masculinities, 10(4).

Cornwall, A. and N. Lindisfarne (eds) (1994) Dislocating Mascu linity: Comparative Ethnographies, London and New York: Routledge.

Demetriou, D. (2001) ‘Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculin ity: a critique’, Theory and Society, 30: 337–61.

Donovan, B. (1998) ‘Political consequences of private author ity: promise keepers and the transformation of hegemonic masculinity’, Theory and Society, 27: 817–43.

Drewett, M. (2003) ‘Battling over borders: narratives of resistance to the South African border war voiced through popular music’, Social Dynamics, 29(1): 78–98.

Du Pisani, J. (2004) ‘Hegemonic Masculinity in Afrikaner National ist Mobilisation, 1934–1938’, in S. Dudink, K. Hageman and J. Tosh (eds), Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Elshtain, J. (1995) Women and War,

2nd edn, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Enloe, C. (1993) The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War, Berkeley and London: University of California Press.

Foucault, M. (1969) The Archaeology of Knowledge, New York: Random House.

Frederickse, J. (1990) The Unbreak- able Thread: Non-Racialism in South Africa, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Geldenhuys, D. (1982) ‘What do we think? A survey of white opinion on foreign policy issues’, Occasional Paper, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Interna tional Affairs.

Helman, S. (1999) ‘War and resist ance: Israeli civil militarism and its emergent crisis’, Constella- tions, 6(3): 391–410.

Hooper, C. (2001) Manly States: Masculinities, International Relations and Gender Politics, New York: Columbia University Press.

Kaplan, D. and E. BenAri (2000) ‘Brothers and others in arms: managing gay identity in combat units of the Israeli army’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 29(4): 396–432.

Lloyd, M. (2005) Beyond Identity Politics: Feminism, Power and Politics, London: Sage.

MacInnes, J. (1998) The End of Mas- culinity: The Confusion of Sexual Genesis and Sexual Difference in Modern Society, Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Mann, M. (1987) ‘The roots and contradictions of modern militarism’, New Left Review, 162, March/April, pp. 35–50.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 00

8. Z

ed B

oo ks

. A ll

rig ht

s re

se rv

ed .

Six 142

Marks, S. and N. Andersson (1990), ‘The epidemiology and culture of violence’, in N. Manganyi and A. Du Toit (eds), Political Violence and the Struggle in South Africa, London: Macmillan.

Moll, P. (1985) ‘The End Conscription Campaign’, South Africa Focus.

Phelan, S. (1999) Sexual Strangers: Gays, Lesbians and the Dilemmas of Citizenship, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Phillips, M. (2002) ‘The End Con scription Campaign 1983–1988: a study of white extraparliamentary opposition to apartheid’, Un published Master of Arts thesis, University of South Africa.

Rotberg, R. (1987) ‘The ascendency of Afrikanerdom’, in D. Mermelstein (ed.), The Anti-Apartheid Reader: South Africa and the Struggle Against White Racist Rule, New York: Grove Weidenfeld.

Seegers, A. (1987) ‘Apartheid’s military: its origins and develop ment’, in W. James (ed.), The State of Apartheid, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.

Suran, J. (2001) ‘Coming out against war: antimilitarism and homo sexuality in the era of Vietnam’, American Quarterly, 53(2): 452–88.

Thompson, D. and J. Branford (eds) (1994) South African Oxford English Dictionary, Cape Town: Oxford University Press.

TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Commission) (1997) ‘Special submission on conscription’, 23 July, <www.truth.org.za/special/ conscrip/conscr01.htm>, accessed 17 July 2001.

Wood, B. (1991) ‘Preventing the vacuum: determinants of the Namibian settlement’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 17(4): 742–69.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 00

8. Z

ed B

oo ks

. A ll

rig ht

s re

se rv

ed .