Shortening of Conscription
In 1989, conscription was reduced from two years to one year, and during the negotiations to end apartheid from 1990 to 1994, it was less rigorously enforced. A Kairos campaign against conscription was the 1989 Campaign focussing on the End Conscription Campaign with participation of Alistair Teeling Smith, Rob Watson and Mandy Tailor. Saul Batzofin, 27, a member of the End Conscription Campaign, was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment in 1989 for refusing to serve in the South African Defence Force. After he had completed his sentence he later told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that he wanted to apply for amnesty to clear his criminal record. Although he was proud to have been a conscientious objector, the record caused difficulties with visa applications for foreign countries.
During September 1989, thirty Stellenbosch conscientious objectors joined more than 700 listed COs nation-wide by publicly refusing to do military service. The National Registry of Conscientious Objectors was also launched.
Read more about this topic: End Conscription Campaign
Famous quotes containing the words shortening and/or conscription:
“A point has been reached where the peoples of the Americas must take cognizance of growing ill-will, of marked trends toward aggression, of increasing armaments, of shortening tempers—a situation which has in it many of the elements that lead to the tragedy of general war.... Peace is threatened by those who seek selfish power.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“We have our difficulties, true; but we are a wiser and a tougher nation than we were in 1932. Never have there been six years of such far flung internal preparedness in all of history. And this has been done without any dictator’s power to command, without conscription of labor or confiscation of capital, without concentration camps and without a scratch on freedom of speech, freedom of the press or the rest of the Bill of Rights.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)