End Conscription Campaign - ECC Banning

ECC Banning

The organisation was banned in August 1988 under emergency regulations. In a press statement Adriaan Vlok, then Minister of Law and Order said: "The changes posed by the activities of the End Conscription Campaign to the safety of the public, the maintenance of public order and the termination of the State of Emergency, leave no other choice than to act against the ECC and to prohibit the organisation from continuing any activities or acts."

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."

As a result of the banning of the ECC and confiscation of the Weekly Mail, protests at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and other campuses were held. According to Grassroots, a crowd of 3000 UCT students marched on campus after a meeting condemning the banning. The paper said, "government fears losing control of white youth. This is the message sent by the banning of the ECC under emergency regulations...the ECC pointed out that there is a civil war in our country, and that the SADF is being used against fellow South Africans....ECC's growing influence led PW Botha and Magnus Malan to close it down. They fear that the message of the ECC will undermine apartheid's defence force." After the End Conscription Campaign was banned, hundreds of white South African war resisters refused the call-up, and conscription into the War in Angola and Civil War raging in South Africa's Black Townships continued. Some dodged the draft, others fled the country, some stood-up and faced the consequences for what they believed. None were ever given recognition by either the South African government or the newly elected democracy.