JDs chronicle sa-soldier

Memories of 1 South African Infantry Battalion (1988)
Page 1 - Call-up for Nasionale Diensplig
By James Dekker

When I was called up to the 1st South African Infantry Battalion in Bloemfontein in 1988 I, like many other politically disinformed white South African youths, never really questioned the reasons behind the call-up. I definitely was not aware of the fact that Fidel Castro was maintaining tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers in Angola.

I'd gotten my first call-up papers in 1981 when I was still at school and because I was a British citizen I only needed to state that I was not willing to go and that was that. I still got called up every year afterwards until in 1985 a law was passed stating that foreign citizens living in the country for more than 10 years had to either take on the South African citizenship or leave the country.

We were not made to renounce our original citizenships and from then on carried dual nationalities, which I still have today. A lot of people decided to rather leave the country instead of taking on the South African citizenship as this new law meant that their sons would have to serve in the South African army too.

During the 1980's political instability within South Africa had reached it's peak and, as if this wasn't enough, there was a full-on war raging up on the borders of South West Africa and Angola. A war that few people were aware of, and one that is almost forgotten today. If I think back, I don't remember ever having spent a single moment worrying about what impact these factors would have on my life. I was too busy growing up!

When I left school in 1984 I joined the Cape Town Fire Brigade where I spent the next 3 years doing civil service and having a party whilst I was at it. 10 years of civil service exempted one from doing National Service, but after 3 years I found that I wasn't really moving forward in life. When I was called up again for 1988, I decided to leave the brigade and do my service in the defence force. I was now 22 years old and ready for something new, and as I had already spent most of my life in uniform, be it at school or in the fire brigade, I didn't expect the army to be too great a hurdle.

The fire brigade was fun, and I experienced a lot of crazy things whilst putting out fires in Cape Town, but I wanted more out of life and the only way to get ahead in South Africa at the time was to do my duty in the army. So it happened that I went to 1 SAI in Bloemfontein, South Africa's premiere mechanized infantry battalion. Being a few years older than the other guys who were mostly 18 and fresh out of school, and having spent 3 years in the fire brigade I was quite used to taking orders from rank. This would prove to be a great advantage for me.