10South African Peace

National Peace Ballot - signing fo r peace j ^ e peace Movement was never regarded in Rondebosch, Capetown, August 1951. as a vitai issue ;n SA which was isolated

The current movement in our country against the apartheid war and for a just peace is not a new phenomenon. In the 1950’s there existed a South African Peace Council (SAPC) and regional peace councils that were committed to the struggle for national and international peace.The South African Peace Council was launched in 1953 at a conference in Johannesburg. In attendance were the already established Transvaal and Cape Town Peace Councils and 215 delegates from other organisations, representing over 250 000 people.The arguments consistently raised by the SAPC in all its activities were that international disputes should be settled by negotiation not war, that there should be universal disarmament, that foreign powers should not impose themselves on third world countries and that national and international issues of peace were interlinked.Speaking at the conference the secretary of the Transvaal Peac; Council, Hilda Watts, outlined the approach that the Peace Movement was to t, ve:“ We must appeal to the housewife in terms of war and pricer o the scientists on terms of the developn 5nt of science for the cause of humanity , not destruction; to churchmen on the moral wrongness of war; and to the African on how the fight for peace assists his struggle.”

“Peace and friendship am ongst all our people shall be secured by upholding the equal rights, opport­unities and status o f all” .

The regional Peace Councils’ first campaign, before the formation of the SAPC , was the National Peace ballot in1951.

In 1953 the World Peace Council called for the banning of nuclear weapons and the peaceful use of atomic energy . The SA Peace Council welcomed this call with enthusiasm and resolved to win active support for it.Scientists, artists, lawyers and other professionals were called on to support the campaign in their different capacities. Symposiums and meetings were held in centres to discuss the implications of nuclear war. A key issue at these meetings was S-'-’s involvement as a principal

supplier o f uranium, in the production of the atom bomb.The Peace Council responded to many of the international crises of the time. It campaigned against sending SA pilots to Korea, the role of the US in rearming Germany, the proposed use of SA troops in Kenya, and British, French and Israeli aggression at Suez.

At the Congress of the People in 1955, the final demand of the Freedom Charter, “There be peace and friendship” , was a slogan that had been used across the world in international Peace Council activities and conferences. The clauses of this demand express the demands repeated year after by the councils - that SA respect the sovereign­ty of all nations and strive to maintain world peace by negotiation, not war. Above all “Peace and friendship amongst all our people shall be secured by up­holding the equal rights, opportunities and status for all” .

A year after the Congress o f the People key members of the SAPC were amongst the 156 members of the Congress Movement put on trial in the massive Treason Trial that lasted five years.

Although all of the accused were aquitted many, including Rev.

Thompson the chair of the SAPC , were banned, Unlike some of the organisations that comprised the Congress Movement,

the SAPC was never banned but fizzled out during the trial.

from international acts of aggression. It never developed into a mass movement but consisted of a small group of people, embracing a nucleus of intellectuals com­mitted to peace.

The Council nevertheless made a signifi­cant contribution to progressive struggle in SA, notably in the Congress Alliance. It was able - through its publications, meetings and petitions — to build an un­derstanding of international struggle and solidarity, draw attention to the threat of

“ ...build an understanding o f inter­national struffles and solidarity... and make the links betw een inter­national and local questions o fpeace.”

imperialism to the South African struggle, and make the links between international and local questions of peace. Although SAPC members were often act­ive in various political organisations, it maintained an independent and ‘non-sec­tarian’ position. The SAPC believed that what united “ pacifists, socialists, democ­rats and religious groups” was a burning desirefor peace. Like today, “ the peace movement is the common factor through­out the world: between the liberation movements, the trade unions and the in­dividuals who support one system or an­other.”As the ’50s slogan had it: “There is no freedom without peace and there is no peace w ithout freedom” .

‘We ain’t gonna war no more!’“OUT NOW” — A participant’s account o f the American Movement Against the Vietnam War”

by Fred Halstead (Monad)

Once upon a time there was the sixties and there was the Movement Against the Vietnam War. Popcultural images are con­jured up of a tangerine dreamworld some­where between Hair and Woodstock, with long-haired blown-niind peace-signed yoga-and-yoghurt hippie Yippies chanting “ hell no, we won’t go” , as they burn their draft cards to the beat of the “ Grateful Dead” against a newsflash background of My Lai getting massacred, Dr Spock get­ting arrested, Richard Nixon getting heavy, as embittered quadraplegic Viet­nam Vets come home... They wanna ...Jane Fonda in Hanoi... Burning Bhudd- ist Brahmins and napalm infernos light up TVs in homes across America every night, searing into the consciousness — and con­science - o f a nation. 4 DEAD AT KENT STATE. The Movement had its casualties too.

“Out Now” is a comprehensive and sober history of the anti-Vietnam war move­ment in America by one of the key organ­isers, Fred Halstead. It cuts through the ‘ \g e of Aquarius’-type mythology sur­rounding the movement. This metic­ulously researched book shows that it was not a freaky make-love-not-war mega­experience run by dopeheads. Rather it was the product of the perseverant self- sacrifice and dedicated organising of a diverse group of people, replete with mis­takes, infighting and self-sacrifice.

Halstead chronicles the development of this movement, informing it always with his own particular participant’s perspec­tive. The humble beginnings in the post- McCarthy early sixties, when most Amer­icans — to the extent that they knew of the war — ignored it. Then the Teach-Ins and Sit-Ins on the campuses. The “First International Days of Protest” in 1965 organised by the Fifth Avenue Peace Par­ade Committee which was the locus of early organisation on the East Coast, and the growth of its equivalent in the West, the Vietnam Day Committee.

1967-1971. The make-heyday of the movement. Demonstrators going “all the way with LBJ” (President Johnson), disturbing his presidcnial sleep, his public pronouncements, his businessman’s brun­ches. Picketing of draft induction centres. Coffee bars for GIs. ‘Resist the Draft’

Week. The Fort Hood Three and the Fort Jackson Eight — GIs refuse to go to Viet­nam. All the small demos. The mass dem­onstrations drawing hundreds of thous­ands out against the war. The March on the Pentagon in October 1967... The 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago when Mayor Daly’s Pigs staged a Blood-In and smashed up thousands of demonstrators on TV... Simultaneous demonstrations of 750 000 in Washington and 250 000 in San Francisco on Novem­ber 15, 1969, and even larger ones in April 1971. The Biggest Greatest Political Demonstrations in American History.

Civil Disobedience. The Berrigan brothers pouring napalm over the records at the draft board. Barry Bondhus outclassing them by doing much the same with two buckets of first-grade shit. Occupations of military research labs on the campuses. War tax resistance. Draft-dodging.And the Vietnam Day Committee has this idea of stopping trains by putting their bodies on the line (literally), but the trains just bore down on them at 10 m.p.h. with instructions not to stop, scattering the folks like flies.

The book is especially informative on the debates and controversy that surrounded planning. Should any groups be excluded from the movement? (The non-exclusion principle was always strongly upheld. Should support be given to anti-war Dem­ocratic Party presidential candidates'? Immediate withdrawal of American troops or a negotiated settlement - what

demand should be made.’ (The main­stream of the movement never wavered from an ‘out now' position). Discordant views had to be thrashed out at every point of the way. A tradition of toler­ance of differences of opinion, long absent in the l !S Left, had to be ie- established. The tone sei by the radical pacifists under the influence of A J Muste, the universally respected elder statesperson and mentor of the move­ment. played a salutorv role in this tes- pect.

Still, the fragile coalition that comprised the anti-war movement collapsed on .i number of occasions and had to be re­built Thus the National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam begat the National Mobilization Commi­ttee. which begat the New Mobilization Committee, which begat the National Peace Action Coalit*jn.

Put ill of this together and you get an absorbing and instructive two-week read, full o f lessons, ideas and debates to fuel us as we build our movement agauis militarisation and conscription I 1 e ucli ievements of the American *jnt:-«ai movement were considerable and can up ly but inspire us. As Halstead stirrings concludes: “The antiwar movement s u ­ed with nothing but leaflets But it i ed that people can think for them seh if the issue touches them deeply emu:! technology notwithstanding In : .■ affairs there is still nothing so | . ■> . as an idea and a movement whi ' s ; has come.’’

Dear Objector

The last few years have seen what is probably the strongest resurgence o f the peace movement since the Second World War, in both Eastern and Western Europe, North America and Japan. This growing protest movement is aimed firstly against the immediate threat o f annihilation by the world’s nuclear arsenals, and secondly against the technocratic and militaristic system of oppression which gives rise to this threat.

The so-called civilian nuclear industry, (against which the movement is also aimed) is inextricably linked to the military nuclear industry, both histor­ically and technologically, and it is thus ,'ust as reflective of the political and economic system which gives rise to these industries as nuclear weapons themselves are.

Opposition to nuclear power can there­fore be seen as opposition to nuclear weapons and to the social, political, econ­omic and world order which goes with them.

South Africa’s nuclear industry, most visibly represented by the Koeberg nucl­ear power station and the Valindaba enrichment plant is at a reasonably adv­anced stage. So much so, in fact, that this country, together with the likes of Israel and Taiwan, is internationally susp­ected to possess a nuclear capability, ie: that it is able to construct a nuclear weapon if it has not already done so.

These acts bear not only a superficial resemblance to others relating to ‘state security’ in the semantics and the gram­mar involved, but they serve also the same purpose of ensuring the continued exploitation and oppression of the majority o f the country’s people. Just as the military is likely to play an increasing­ly im portant role in repression, so the nuclear industry will become involved.

Robert Zungk has said that ‘technological tyranny is both more powerful and more vulnerable than earlier forms of dominat­ion. But in the long run, water wears away the stone.’That is what oppositon to nuclear power is all about.Thomas Auf der Heyde for Koeberg Alert

In view of recent talk by US and NATO generals concerning the possibility of a ‘limited and tactical nuclear strike’.South Africa’s nuclear industry can be seen to threaten progress towards a peaceful and democratic society on two ‘fronts’.

Firstly, the possibility that a nuclear weapon may be used internally as a polit­ical or military threat may not, in fact, be as far-fetched as it seems, when one cons­iders the siege mentality which is current­ly evolving. Secondly, and perhaps more immediate, is the effect which legislation pertaining to the nuclear industry hason South African society. This industry is governed specifically by the Nuclear Energy Act, but more generally its install­ations fall under the Keypoints Act which relates also to military installations.

Women and WarDear Objector

I am a woman. I look at our society and I see its violence. I see how violent it is generally, but especially I see how violent it is towards women. And I look also at the way in which our society functions - at its militarisation; at all the young men who go to the army because they have and learn there to function in a way which means they can, w ithout thinking, fight and kill another person

I cannot help but see the connections between the two - on the one hand viol­ence against women and on the other, generations of men taught that to be a real man you must obey orders, not be

a person, be able to kill others, be forced to suppress who you are in order to surv­ive.

I know that in the army, sexuality and violence are linked..(here’s my rifle, here’s my gun; this one’s for shooting, this one’s for fun.) I know that police­men form the largest group o f wife-batt- erers; I have heard women say that they were raped again by the police when they went to lay a charge of rape; I have watched my two brothers change into different people through being conscrip­ted into the army; I have heard of the hitching troopie returning home after a weekend pass who flags down a lone female motorist and rapes her. The

horror stories could and would fill pages.

I am not saying that violence against women is the result of militarisation only. Violence against women is the result of many factors which operate in our society; neither am I saying that militarisation only results in violence against women.

Militarisation results in many kinds of violence; all of which could be fruit­fully explored. I believe it is vital that we start making the connections and working against all violence in our society.

YoursCarol Bower.

Issu e d b y : C O S G , P .O . B o x 208, W o o d s to c k

P rin te d b y A llie s P rin tin g S e rvic e s . P .O . B o x 62 . A t h lo n # 7764

Collection Number: AG1977

END CONSCRIPTION CAMPAIGN (ECC)

PUBLISHER: Publisher:- Historical Papers Research Archive

Location:- Johannesburg

©2013

LEGAL NOTICES:

Copyright Notice: All materials on the Historical Papers website are protected by South African copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, or otherwise published in any format, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

Disclaimer and Terms of Use: Provided that you maintain all copyright and other notices contained therein, you may download material (one machine readable copy and one print copy per page) for your personal and/or educational non-commercial use only.

People using these records relating to the archives of Historical Papers, The Library, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, are reminded that such records sometimes contain material which is uncorroborated, inaccurate,

distorted or untrue. While these digital records are true facsimiles of paper documents and the information contained herein is obtained from sources believed to be accurate and reliable, Historical Papers, University of the Witwatersrand has not independently verified their content. Consequently, the University is not responsible for any errors or

omissions and excludes any and all liability for any errors in or omissions from the information on the website or any related information on third party websites accessible from this website.

This document is part of a collection held at the Historical Papers Research Archive at The University of the

Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.