CHAPTER 23: Conscription?
CHAPTER 23
Conscription?
AT HEAD OFFICE, JAN WAS AWARE THAT NEIL WAS BEING followed. The Special Branch made no attempt at concealment. For his part, Neil was invigorated by the heightened political activity and the first steps towards union unity. ‘I think he was both excited and apprehensive, as we all were’, recalls Jan Theron. Nevertheless, it puzzled Jan that the security police were picking on Neil. Two years earlier Neil had been, in Jan’s eyes, very much an outsider and ‘very impressionable’. Although Neil was a few years younger, they shared the experience of having dominant fathers from whose influence they had extracted themselves. Jan saw Neil, to some extent, use him as a model. He noticed how Neil acquired the same kind of tweed jacket, like adopting ‘the same uniform, that sort of thing, nothing sort of overt’. Over a couple of years, Jan witnessed Neil grow into a confident union organiser who completely shared the union’s mission of building solidly the kind of ‘proper organisation’ that distinguished what they were doing from some of the ostensibly more ‘political unions’ that were, in Jan’s view, ‘basically just here today, gone tomorrow’.
The anti-Republic Day campaign had also stressed unity and solidarity. After many years, it was ‘the first real articulation of a kind of ANC-type politics’ and Jan knew that any association between unions and such activity was highly suspect. So was this why the security police were targeting Neil? However, he dismissed the possibility of Neil being involved in underground work. It would have compromised the union, and that was something Neil would surely not have risked. Moreover, where was the time for underground activity? Union work was enormously time-consuming. It involved hanging around outside factories, attending meetings at night, and frequently taking people home afterwards. In addition, Neil spent two nights every week at the hospital. Jan was convinced that Neil would simply not have had the time.
Jan was aware of Neil evading his army call-up and had advised him that, when the army ultimately caught up with him, he would have to go. If he continued to resist, it would cause unnecessary controversy for the union. Despite their respect for Jan, Gavin and Sipho counselled the very opposite. They put the position strongly. ‘Precisely because you’re a young white organiser of Food and Canning, you cannot go to the army,’ they told him. Neil could dodge the military police for as long as possible, but when they caught up with him there were only two alternatives: he could go to jail as a conscientious objector, or he could leave the country, a choice that Sipho and Gavin hoped he wouldn’t make. In Gavin’s words, ‘But the one option that isn’t there, as someone holding your beliefs and working in the union, is to go to the army’.
Neil had already dodged for years. That option was running out. The ‘brick wall’, foreseen by Liz, stood ahead. That the matter was on his mind is evident in a conversation recalled by Sisa that took place in September 1981. Sisa was once again out of prison. He reports Neil as saying, ‘Comrade, once again the Defence Force has approached me for conscription and, as a communist, I’m going to refuse. Some people say I should leave the country. As a communist, I’m not going to run away … on religious grounds. What do you think?’ Sisa replied, ‘No man, make an excuse … Take the soft option … because your life shouldn’t be in detention. It should be outside, working with the people.’ But Neil was adamant. ‘Jesiss, this comrade is dedicated!’ thought Sisa. ‘To an extent, I think he was also skidding towards leaving the country. It was a short conversation, consulting me. He was worried. Who wouldn’t be?’
Neil may not, in fact, have received his call-up papers. He might, according to Gavin, have been using the issue to let Sisa know ‘where he stood politically’ and that he had clearly ruled out accepting conscription. I asked Gavin, could he imagine Neil declaring forthrightly, ‘As a communist …’?
I think Neil could have used the word. He was a radical, and would be impatient with a softer ‘socialist’ descriptor. And at times we tended to define ourselves as communists outside the SACP, ie not Stalinists, but more in the vein of Gramscian communists. We read Capital as just one of the many Marxist texts and were schooled in most of the ‘classics’ – Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg, Gramsci etc through to more recent writers.
Sisa, it seems, had become privy to inner political thoughts that Neil did not share with most of his union comrades. Neil, who had grown so much through his own contact with ‘mentors’, in books and in life, was himself now a mentor to younger comrades, although he was the kind of teacher who remains the eternal learner, excited by the exchange of ideas. He knew the danger of declaring himself ‘a communist’. But recognising a kindred spirit in Sisa, I suspect that he felt impelled to communicate his understanding of an ideology that broke both racial and class barriers.
In the documentary film Passing the Message, it is possible to catch a glimpse of Neil that same September at the union’s forty-first annual conference.1 He had again driven down to Cape Town, this time with a delegation of eight workers. Neil and Jan appear to be the only white people in a large upstairs room, filled with delegates, in the Ray Alexander Union Centre in Paarl. A banner, behind the speakers’ tables, proclaims the union’s motto, ‘AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL’. On the wall is a small picture of their jailed comrade, Oscar Mpetha. The delegates open the conference with raised fists and sombre voices, singing ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika’. As the legendary 80-year-old Dora Tamana speaks to the assembly, the camera pans across the room. Neil is there, bearded and wearing his tweed jacket, his head tilted, listening intently to the tiny woman in a simple knitted cap. Although she is nearly blind behind her dark glasses, her voice still retains the power of a lifetime of hardship and activism. Despite bannings and imprisonment, Aunt Dora has organised women throughout her adult life. She addresses the women in the room directly in isiXhosa. Neil’s brow is furrowed, concentrating on the subsequent Afrikaans translation. Her message is clearly also for the men:
We must take action today for these are hard times. It’s time the women took off their long skirts and dressed like Chinese women. You must wear trousers just like men. You must become men … Times are bad. The workers are slaves. It’s high time again we fought and if the women don’t, there’ll be no fight. Women unite!
The camera glances over Neil for a second time, the angle of his head suggesting that he is busy taking notes. Jan is explaining why the union cannot avoid a wider political struggle. His tone is measured, but his hands are impassioned:
We as a Trade Union are forced to confront the government’s policy because the government’s policy confronts us. The Ciskei is, how shall I put it, the weakest link in the chain – the chain which the government call their Bantustan policy or independent ‘homeland’. Its aim is to make people foreigners in their own country …
The Annual Report of Food and Canning’s conference on that weekend of 19-20 September 1981 contains a full record of Jan seamlessly interweaving information, explanation and exhortation, his manner totally different from the pompous white managers who control the members’ factories. Both Jan and Neil offer a glimmer of hope that it is possible for white people to share the same space as equals. Moreover, there is a sense of belonging to a wider world, with Jan drawing on recent events in Europe: South African workers should be inspired by the spirit of Polish workers who have swept aside officially-run unions in favour of their own union, Solidarity, and are demanding a say in running their factories. They should elect their managers. They should elect their government. It is fighting talk.2
Also portrayed in the film is the aspect of communal theatre, one participant saying, ‘There are all kinds of songs. Singing gives us strength. When we are singing we never look backwards. We only look ahead.’ Clearing away chairs, sweeping the hall, bringing in mattresses on which to sleep, union members sing as they work, weaving between each other as in a dance. Before settling down, a prayer is offered for the night. Beyond its concern with the material welfare of members, the union offers a community and shared spirit through which they will overcome adversity.
The imagery in a marching song reflects the militancy, workers transformed into soldiers, at one with those who ‘are marching in’:
Let us go to work
Working for Africa
The soldiers are marching in
Soldiers of Africa
How could Neil possibly accept conscription when it would mean him fighting his worker comrades? That would be betrayal.