End Conscription Campaign - Counter-operations Against The ECC

Counter-operations Against The ECC

Many ECC members were subject to persecution. During 1986 98 members were detained, and others subjected to systematic harassment and intimidation. Meetings, publications and activities of the organisation were banned. Disinformation, death threats, fire-bombings, assaults, break-ins, and anonymous counter-propaganda against the organisation was commonplace. Evidence in a Cape Town court in 1988 revealed that the SADF itself had been running a disinformation campaign against the ECC. Political and military figures adopted varying and sometimes contradictory methods and messages to try and contain the threat of conscientious objection. National Party politicians characterised ECC activists as naive, malevolent in intent, in league with 'communist revolutionaries' and also as sexually deviant and cowardly. However, there is evidence that sentencing magistrates and even state prosecutors came to admire objectors for their stand.