Letters | ‘National conscription’

I found Zukiswa Pikoli’s opinion piece, “a mindset of service will shape young people to become responsible citizens”,(The WitnessFeb 20), very interesting: finally someone who speaks openly, candidly, about “national conscription”. But conscription is not that open, nor a candid topic. In fact, it’s “taboe”, a painful reminder of the dark days of apartheid.

Conscription, in the context of it’s application, effectively means “forced” enrollment of whatever kind which, in a true democratic country such as South Africa, screams against everything our constitution stands for. Yet, Pikoli continues to advocate the value of conscription, not in the sense of “forcing people to actively participate in up-holding an illegitimate system of government”, (past), but rather about being of service to their country. She is, of course, so very right!

She goes further, by reflecting on a family member who chose not to go straight into university after school, but instead enrolling in a “regimented” life skills programme for a year. This is so very interesting. I would like to focus on the word “regimented”.

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Back in the apartheid years, most schools had a “regiment”, affectionately known as cadets: full military uniforms, allbeit “kortbroeke”, (shorts), caps, drums, flutes, trumpets etc, that would be “spit and polished” every Thursday night, for our training performance on a Friday afternoon after school. This cadet corps had nothing to do with military conscription, but we were taught important life skills, through a military mind set, throughout our high school years. Sadly, this important life skills programme is non-existent in schools today.

The idea of national service, not in a military sense of word, but rather in life skills programmes, was proponented by Mandela himself. It was out there then, it is still today, brought alive by the brave opinion piece of Pikoli. The positives of such a “life skills conscription” programme are vast: immediately, drastically, reducing unemployment, crime will reduce, as the years go by, and as this “conscription” programme settles. School leavers will inherit a sense of discipline, pride, belonging, returning conscripts would find employment opportunities, and countless other positive possibilities.

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