SADF Insights : 1979 to 1981

In June 1981 I completed my two years of compulsory "National Service" in the South African Defense Force (SADF). I had been conscripted into the 7 SA Infantry Battalion and spent nine months in training (at Bourkes Luck and at Phalaborwa) and over a year in the South West African (Namibian) "operational area" commonly known as "The Border". For most of that time I was a "Grunt" - Rifleman 2, Section 2, Platoon 2, Alpha Company.

In April 2000 I found a piece of paper in the back of a drawer in my room at my mother's house in Pretoria. Nineteen years earlier, on a scrap of military stationery, I had scribbled down the insights I gained during my 24 months as an unwilling conscript in Apartheid's war machine. Interesting reading. What a waste:

• I have learned the meaning of love and respect, and how to hate.
• I have learned endurance and now know what I can take.
• I have learned the value of life and experienced the loss of death.
• I have been elated by true happiness and crushed by unyielding despair.
• I have learned to handle people and situations.
• I have seen the other side of life.
• I have learned to despise war and treasure peace.
• I have acquired some self discipline, but not army discipline.
• I now know that I must have freedom and am revolted by tyrannical oppression.
• I enjoy the tranquility of solitude and the excitement of a chosen group of friends.
• I have learned to never follow blindly and to reason carefully.
• I now know that nothing is impossible.
• I have discovered that true friendship is a scarce and valuable commodity.
• I despise the Racist Afrikaner for his contorted beliefs, his lack of culture, upbringing, etiquette and manners, his warped and twisted view of life and people, the way he resorts to violence when he knows he has not got a foot to stand on, for what he has done to me, my family and my freedom and finally for the way he is destroying this beautiful country. The Afrikaner's Apartheid-based nationalist political standpoint is deplorable.
  

With hindsight the fact that I was able to find any positive learning points at all is amazing to me. I suffered during those two years, but it appears that the glass was half full as opposed to being half empty. Yes. With my sweat, blood and tears.

MAlfaRK ©