“A Visual Story”, presentation at Karlstad University, Sweden

from “Photographs in Conversation” an international colloquium on living archives at Karlstad University, Friday December 10, 2021. This presentation fall under the programme heading:” The Archive and the Nation: South Africa and Bosnia and Herzegovina”.

How rediscovering a personal archive of conscript portraits 27 years after the nationalist regime in South Africa led to a life-altering PhD research project.

In 2014 I completed a postgraduate course titled Imaging the World in Photographs convened by Dr Siona O’Connell and Prof. Nick Shepherd. The course focused on photography as a system of representation, one that linked the past, present and future within South Africa. I included a series of seventeen portraits that I had taken as a conscript in the South African Navy in 1990. The portraits were taken during the three-month basic training phase of national service in the SADF (South African Defence Force). Although photography was strictly prohibited in the SADF I somehow persuaded my superiors that a photographic record of the experience would serve the interests of the navy. As a result, I was allowed to document aspects of the basic training phase at SAS Saldanha naval training base. Dr Siona O’Connell was fascinated by the series, specifically how the photos functioned as an archive of a hidden and exclusively white history and suggested I research the topic further.

It is estimated that 600 000 men, in all, were conscripted from white South African society between 1968 and 1993 (Williams 2008). This allowed for the evolution of a complex socialised obligation towards conscription, buttressed by an oppressive political and military regime. I discovered that the experience of induction and basic training had not been researched in any scholarly detail, and rarely moved beyond the anecdotal accounts of ex-conscripts. My findings set in motion a detailed study titled “Shadows asking an echo to dance” Navigating ambiguity: How former conscripts(1980-1990) navigate memories of induction into the SADF in post-apartheid society that revealed fascinating insights into the effects of systemic militarisation within a  generation of white South African males. The study contributed fresh insights into the construction of militarised masculinities, memory and whiteness during the height of the nationalist apartheid state.

Nonetheless, in this brief presentation, I would like to focus on my archive of photographs. Although most SADF conscripts did not experience actual combat, basic training undoubtedly marked the first performative rite of passage for white militarised masculinities. During the 1980s there were two intakes annually, one in late January or early February, and another in July. Conscripts usually received their call-up papers by mail or telegram, which would detail the branch of service, the military unit they had been allotted to, and the exact date they were required to report for duty. The duration of national service was 24 months, followed by a further 720 days of part-time duty. Basic training provided an ideal opportunity to cement perceptions that South Africa was a state under siege, effectively at war with communist forces intent on invasion. Once inducted into a military environment, conscripts formed a communal group in which they all are equally separated (from society) and stripped of their identity by the military ritual of basic training.

Decades later, I discovered that my series of conscript portraits was a visual story that countered this ritualistic stripping of identity and the process of manufacturing an obedient militarised masculinity for the state.  Basic training, the world over, exemplifies the metamorphosis of a boy into a man, yet my simple series of portraits attempted to humanise the individual. It required a silence of almost three decades for me to understand why I embarked on this series of portraits. This was no simple photographic document of conscripts in basic training, but something deeper. Certainly, on a personal level, the act of recording fellow conscripts was possibly an attempt at negating the loss of identity from a civilian to a military environment that is usually abrupt and even violent. Basic training in the SADF was at times especially brutal and marked by a rupture of the ties to self, family and social environments. An ex-conscript described basic training as “the final moulding of the youth into a Nat[ionalist] style of thought”. In this sense, my portraits act as counter-document to the experience.

What struck me, on rediscovering the archive, was how disturbingly boyish the subjects looked. The images seemed imbued with a childlike sense of naivety and could double for as a series of portraits of adolescents in a school environment, such as a boarding school if it wasn’t for the obvious military uniforms. Yet, these conscripts are presented as active yet unwilling “political agents” of the state, in an environment that helped preserve and serve the needs of the white minority.

A striking aspect of these photographs is the absence of an obvious military environment. Ex-conscripts described SADF bases as Spartan environments, and in some instances, they likened the surroundings to a prison. One ex-conscript described himself as a “willing prisoner of the state” (Gareth). In this sense, the military base served as a locale of separation and isolation, both mentally and physically, where a secluded conscript community could be subjected to the stresses of basic training, yet this is not present in any of the photographs.

What these portraits represent is a rare record of adolescents fresh out of high school or university immersed with the military structures of the nationalist regime. They would emerge from the experience, certainly in the eyes of the military, as men, or more specifically, as soldiers in service of the state. The notion that conscription made men out of boys was a “consistent theme of state discourse”. Yet, this process also threw up contradictions, and instances of conscript resistance and non-compliance within the system, given that most SADF were unwilling participants of compulsory military service, were uncommon. On reflection, viewing these portraits almost three decades later prompted me to ask questions of my role as an unwitting agent, among tens of thousands of other males of the conscription generation, of the apartheid state, positioned on the wrong side of history. When viewing these portraits I was drawn to Barthes description of where a photograph is explored not “as a question (or theme) but as a wound: I see, I feel, hence I notice, I observe, and I think” (Barthes 1981: 21).

In this sense, these portraits pose more questions than provide answers and give voice to the oft-silenced plight of not just SADF conscripts, but all young men who are thrust into military environments without the luxury of freedom of choice; whether a First World War British conscript, Second World German conscript or an American draftee in the 60s. These images enjoy a disturbing historical connection with the plight of men who were called to wage war on each other by the state.

Sadly, for many of the now fading generations of ex-conscripts, there is a reticence to come to terms with the experience. My PhD research revealed the persistent belief – that basic training marked the starting point of a national effort of white males to stem the tide of communism, without which South Africa would have become a Soviet puppet state. Looking to the present, this archive provides a rare glimpse of a period that is oft-silenced in South Africa by ex-conscripts themselves and current dominant political discourses. My research hopes that archives of similar nature, from all sectors of society, prompt further conversation and storytelling of our past within a humanistic context. Thank you for allowing me to share my visual story with you.

On a technical note, the photographs were taken with a Minolta XG2 SLR using a 35mm lens. The photos were shot on Kodak Ektachrome E100 slide film.

Stephen Symons
Cape Town, November 2021