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The response to this blog has been great. Thanks to everyone who is participating. I have seen that people are reading the blog from all parts of the world! So for those of you from Equador, or Egypt or Amsterdam or Austria, who are viewing “Sletroep” but may not be familiar with Afrikaans ( the de facto official language of the South African Defense Force in the 1980’s) the following translation may be useful:

The term “sleg troep” literally means “bad soldier”. Perhaps more rotten than bad because the inference was that one “sleg” soldier could contaminate an entire group. To be “sleg’ was more than just to be lacking in discipline; it was not conforming. It was not being part of the general group mentality that prevailed.

Behaviour that did not conform, or was not understood, would be attributed to that individual being either on drugs or a “voken Kommunis” or a “voken moffie”. By 1987 in the 10 Anti-Aircraft regiment, there didn’t seem to be much debate amoung the permanent force leadership (and their hangers on) that I was definitely a scary combination of all three these evils. The debate seemed more to revolve around which of my friends (by virtue of association with me) should be categorised as drug adicts, communists or gays .

I maybe brought it on myself by not integrating with those around me. I remember in Rundu, I was on a strange mission. For one, I had decided not to spend any money at all. I was there for three months and we would get a special “danger pay” for being on the border. Everyone used this money to go into the base ( about 10km drive though the bush) and buy beer and sweets and stuff. For me not spending was an exercise in discipline and stoicism.

I was studying two subjects through unisa at the time, so I spent a lot of time reading for my studies and reading other books I had brought along. I listened to reggae music and my mono speaker cassette recorder. I kept a journal and drew pictures in a notebook. This must have been very scary to those around me who were generally more interested in screaming at each other, slapping each other, stealing from each other and just generally being stupid.

I refused to eat meals with the rest of the people in the “section”. I should explain….As anti-aircraft artillery, our mission at Rundu was to defend the airbase from airborne assault. To do this a “battery” consisting of four “sections” was deployed in the bush around the runway. (One section at roughly each of the corners of the runway). Each “section” consisted of two 35 mm Oerlicon anti aircraft guns, connected by cable to a Radar. The radar would be at the centre of the section and the guns about 50 m away from it on each side. So the centre of the “section” was around the radar. This I where the section commander (normally a leutenant) had his tent. Each of the guns had a gun commander. I was a gun commander. An each gun commander would have a team of six or seven “gunners”. So to come back to the eating arrangements.. What would happen is that the section would converge for meals in a tent near the radar, metal trestle table were set out. Food would be driven in from the base in shiny steel warming canisters. ( there was a kitchen at the base) Eating this food would be a continuous shouting match, swearing and spiting and shoving. Completely crazy. I could not stand it!

I ate my food alone at my tent by the gun ramp.

The red star of the revolution is on Godwana’s door. I don’t know who put it there or what they meant by it. But an eager jazz band plays there on the weekends. As I sat watching the crowd on Sunday, dancing, drinking, having fun and mixing freely I realised that this, in a way, was the society that I had dreamed of in the eighties.

Café Godwana is on the beachfront and Sunday evenings see a crowd of students, jazz lovers, black and white, young and old. Not self conscious or contrived but just comfortably enjoying the space and time together.

In Rundu (on the Angolan border in 1987) I knew that there was something wrong. I was intensely aware that we were in an abnormal situation, an abnormal and distorted society. I sensed clearly then that a new society would emerge, completely different and transformed. I remember thoughts like these playing through my mind,… but mostly then I remember being on a personal quest, brought about perhaps that I felt intensely different from those around me.

After arriving on the plane on that hot, bright white air strip, I came to find that we were in Rundu. We were driven on the back of a Samil 100 troop carrier away from the runway into the bush. Here we found our new home in the bush on the edge of the runway. Chopper tents, under camouflage nets around the 35mm Anti aircraft gun and radar system. Our mission… to protect the runway, the northern most airbase of the South African Defence force from Cuban Mig 23s and other Angolan military aircraft.

Intelligence reports had been received of “high level bombing” that would happen on the evening of the next full moon. Our defences were inadequate, so we spent the next week re-digging bunkers in the soft white sand. Repairing camouflage nets and building sandbag walls around our tents, around the guns around the radar. It was back breaking work, in hot weather, in a foreign country, in a war zone. But in this intense discomfort I came to one of the most significant realisations of my life. A truth that has come with me to this day. Walking up a steep “gun ramp” embankment with a sandbag on my back in the blazing sun; dirty with sand in my teeth, my ears, my hair…. I simply chose at that time not to be angry , frustrated or despondent. I chose at that moment and in that space to be happy. I knew on that day that I had stumbled on a great truth; the truth that happiness is a choice we make for ourselves, that happiness does not come out of circumstance, that happiness is not a product what we do or how we are treated, that happiness is a state of mind that we choose to claim for ourselves.

When the full moon evening came at the end of the week, the night was cool and clear. The “high level” bombers never came. We were not bombed… This too caused me great happiness!

Hlubi and I attended a wedding of a over the weekend. The groom, a friend of ours, spent some time on Robben Island during the eighties after being convicted for offenses relating to his involvement in the then banned African National Congress. During the reception he an a number of speakers related their experiences of life on Robben Island. Things on the Island were difficult. Living arrangements, clothing “too big” or “to small”, isolation from family and friends, bad food, forced labour, censored mail, sadistic handlers. Some spoke of the deep and lasting friendship that were formed. Freindships that have lasted to this day.

I came to wonder if the differences between their time on Robben Island and the uncomfortable time myself and others spent conscripted into the SADF were in fact all that great? We were “imprisoned”, kept behind four metre high fences with armed guards. We wore over sized overalls, ate bad food, carried out futile tasks……I only wondered about the similarities only for a short while and then realised that the Robben Island experience was of course much more severe. The torture and even death at the hands of the security police, years without ever being allowed to go home, even to bury a parent, lengthy sentences, no pass and no beer!

But it came to me that the in fact the significant difference between the experience of conscription and that of Robben Island, was that the Robben Island hardships can today be related openly as rivetting content of wedding reception speeches and stories. People speak with some pride of their hardships on Robben Island, audiences are spellbound, the stories are interesting, sad and funny (often all at the same time) Robben Islanders were imprisoned for their dedication to the ANC (or other liberation movements) they took selfless stand against the apartheid government, and for this they paid the price of imprisonment of Robben Island. When they speak of their experience, they speak from the moral high ground. They fought on the right side of history.

When last have you heard a white man in his thirties or forties speak publicly about his time in the army. It is almost a taboo. I for one have decided not to conceal my time in the SADF. I am sorry for it (for reasons I have explained before) but I have a story to tell and I insist on being heard. I, in my own way, was a victim of a brutal system. I did not suffer as much as those on Robben Island, I was on the wrong side of history, I know, but I am still pissed off about the whole thing. I am angry for those two years that were taken away from me, two years of wishing every day that it would all just end that I could go on with my life, two years of the most small minded, stupid, fascist, PF, dutchman, idiots in your face every day….two years….two years is a long time for a seventeen year old!

PS ….. I am illustrating these blogs with sketches I have found in letters and journals from 1986 and 1987 when I was in the SADF (mostly because I have very few photgraphs from that time)

I dreamt about the army again on Friday night. Though it has been twenty years since I went in I, still have dreams about that time. They are not usually truamatic or stressfull. In earlier years there were dreams of being chased by men with guns. But more recently the dream is set in the present day, I am in the army again, and I cant seem to get the message across to those in control that I have already spent my two years and that it is some mistake that I am in the army again, but in the dream I am caught up in the daily things of a conscript and have resigned myself to just waiting out the term….

I have these dreams without having experienced any major trauma or having comitted (personally) any violent acts, but what about those with blood on their hands, or those that saw thier friends die? What kind of dreams are they having at night?

I think it is important to say at this point that though I am apologising for my time in the army in 1986 and 1987, that I dont have any gory details to share, I never shot anyone, beat anyone, I never saw anyone get shot or anyone getting beaten. I was, though, part of a machine that did kill mame, bomb, poison and throw bodies out of aeroplanes! I was just fortunate not to be at the killing end of that machine. I wrote this piece below in 1993 some time after I came out, clearly some stuff still bugging me.

I killed no man

…..so why then these tears ?

Why do I regret that time ?

…why is it stained on my mind….ingrained ?

when I was not shot nor stabbed,

never starved nor overcome by cold,

nor felt bright Napalm burn my skin,

hot shrapnel rip through my throat;

or my blood brother’s head burst beside me;

hair, bone, brain spill and splat on my face,

my rifle, my boots….

…And me crying, sobbing,

cowering, clasping, crawling

in that dust ?

I did come pretty close to the war at the end of 1987, when I spent three months on the Agolan border at a base near a Namibian town called Rundu. We were flown up to Rundu from Cape Town in a troup carrier. It was the first time I had flown in a plane. We boarded a c130 at Wingfield on a cold and rainy August day. We flew at altitiude. The c130 is not presurised, so it is noisy inside and very cold, you sit in straps that form a hammock of sorts that hangs from the wall of the plane, icicles form against the metal inside the plane. Eveyone is sitting huddled together, kit on the floor, some afraid, some confused, some throwing up into paper bags.

What is important to explain here is that none of us really new where we were going on that day. We had been told some weeks before to pack our kit and be ready to leave at short notice, and that we would be going into the “operational area” for an unspecified time. (I realise now that the secrecy had to do with intelligence protocols, but no one at the time explains) Then after weeks of rumours and expecting to leave at any momement, the trucks arrive and we are all tumbled off to the airfield.. even the mode of transport is kept secret… we could have gone by train or truck, they never told us that we would fly. The secrecy ofcourse breads a network of rumours, everybody has a brother or an uncle that has told them where we are going, how long we would be there for and what our mission would be…. these rumours are rife and conflicting, you choose to believe what you will, but normally you have a reasonable idea of what is going on.

Eventually we land, very bumby. We come to a standstill, it is dark inside the plane, we clutch our rifles in our hands, a whisper goes around the plane that we have landed in Rundu, (others say we are in Grootfontein) but we dont know if this is good or bad. We have heard the names of these bases in stories told to us… Rundu, Oshakati, Grootfontein, Kutimo Molilo. The rear rampdoor opens and a white searing heat enters the plane. As we scurry out of the plane, we dont know if we are about to be shot at or attacked we look around nervously, checking to see if we should take cover, run or shoot! Everything is scorched intensly white, incredible bright light out of the darkness of the plane, slowly we see that we are on a runway, in a large military base, fuel storage, bunkers tents, offices and streets. it all seems reasonably safe……

kwailawai*: Eat my call up