As I journey along this path called life and reach this certain age destined to haunt me for eternity I find myself critically examining my feelings and, in the words of Talking Heads, I ask myself; “Well, how did I get here?” The lyrics (* see bottom of article) now read like a hymn for male depression.
Over the last few months I have been boring anyone who would listen with my theories about why so many South African men of the age 50 to 60 appear to be suffering from depression. So many of my peers are going through unhappy marriages, separation and divorce and seem to be withdrawing into themselves. It could appear to be ‘so many’ in the same way that one begins to notice certain cars as soon as you buy that certain car or it could just be that I am more sensitised to what is going on around me as I critically examine my place and function in the world.
One of my theories about why men of a certain age (and here I have to narrow those men down to a certain niche – white South African males who did National Service during the dark days of apartheid) are experiencing depression and the break up of their families has to do with conscription.
Place yourself in the shoes of someone like myself who, in 1980, received notice that he was expected to fight for his country against the ‘swart/kommunis gevaar’ as soon as he had finished studying at school or completed a degree at university. As the first born son of a fairly liberal English family the talk was around how to avoid two years of conscription. My peers were leaving the country or embarking on tertiary courses that were expected to last 7 years. So off I went to go and do a course that was not my first choice and the inevitable happened – I lost focus, failed and the SADF decided that it was time for me to accept their generous offer of fighting for the country with free food, free uniform, free weapons, free ammunition, free indoctrination, free physical exercise, free abuse and no other freedom at all.
As an English speaking person the first thing that struck me was the palpable intolerance (some would call it hate!) of myself by my fellow Afrikaans speaking recruits – one would swear that the Boer War had just finished. Combine that with my realisation that ‘joining’ the South African Defence Force was not a nation building exercise against a common ‘enemy’ but just marketing and a complete misnomer and you had a recipe for disaster. The first words I heard from a two striped little guy in a uniform was; “Ag nee, nie ‘n fokken Engelsman nie!”
To say that the indoctrination in the SADF was relentless would be putting it mildly. My family background was one of tolerance and people were rated on what they could do and contribute to society – not on the colour of their skin, religion, social status, culture or language.
If you have heard THIS story before then you are welcome to skip ahead:
As a 12 year-old I got the opportunity to work during school holidays for my father who owned a pretty successful electrical contracting business with around 16 teams of electricians. Each team consisted of a Journeyman and assistant (in the language of the day, the assistants were referred to as ‘boys’). On my first day at work my father called the team I was to be assigned to and I into his office and said lines along the following to me in front of the Journeyman and his assistant; “In this place you are not my son. You are here to be the boy to the ‘boy’. If the ‘boy’ tells you to fetch his lunch – you run. If the ‘boy’ tells you to wash the van – it shines. If the ‘boy’ tells you to dig a trench – you dig. You do not speak to the journeyman – he is akin to god here. If you wish to communicate with the Journeyman you do it through the ‘boy’.”
I learned a valuable lesson from my father who, in his own rough way, worked behind the scenes to right some of the wrongs of the disgusting system that South Africa found itself in.
So too my mother who always treated everyone with the greatest respect, humility, love and laughter.
Imagine if you will operating in an environment where if you had people of colour on your property or as guests in your home you ran the risk of a visit from the security police and almost certain censure from your neighbours and friends. Not a pleasant environment in which to express humanity I can assure you.
Back to the SADF:
While what many of us were put through in the SADF was pretty horrifying for a 21 year-old me so I shudder to think what it must have done to impressionable 18 year-old conscripts.
During basics we were ‘broken down’ and reshaped into the government of the day’s ideal of what a fresh faced white male should look and think like – somewhere someone in power read a lot of stuff about Hitler and decided to apply those lessons to the white male youth of South Africa. Basics was a litany of extreme physical exercise, sleep deprivation, senseless lessons, forced church, crazy bed ironing, single language ‘instruction’ (Dis hoekom my fokken afrikaans is so goed, Ma!) and mental abuse.
The next phase of ‘Junior Leadership’ was interrupted as we were shipped off to the townships to ‘deal’ with the riots. The thought of rocks and petrol bombs being hurled at us by people who could have been the very ‘boys’ or sons of ‘boys’ that I grew up and worked with did not sit well on my mind.
The English guys in our section had all gravitated towards 81mm mortars and had formed a formidable unit. The measure of success in 81mm training was how quick the team could get their weapon onto target. This consisted of running with the stripped down weapon to a determined place, assemble, embed and get onto target in the quickest time. Of course much was made of the “sleg fokken engelsmans” until we challenged our instructors to a face off and humiliated them by beating them with minutes to spare. At the time we thought it would get us some respect – how wrong were we as we ran around the base time and time again with base plates as punishment for some trumped up charges. Others got off lightly fetching leaves from trees as we charged around with ungainly 7 kilogram odd base plates held in front of us.
Then it was off to the border for 18 months in three trips – Bushmanland, Eenhana and the Caprivi for us. As the corporal in charge of my little unit I had the designation of observer which involved ‘exciting’ stuff like; observing from the man made tower which was always the highest point and first terrorist target in the camp, calling co-ordinates from aircraft or creeping through the bush to a high point (well we used to call those little mounds high) to call fire onto the ‘enemy’.
It must have been the ever present feeling of danger along with stuff that to this day we don’t talk about, that drove us all mildly insane.
I acknowledge that when I finally came out of the army I was more than slightly ‘bossies’.
The crying shame of it all is that the conscripts never choose to be part of the doctrine of the day and the government of the day basically destroyed the conscripts mental health before unleashing them onto an unsuspecting public. On leaving the army we were never given any form of counseling or guidance, our families and loved ones were just expected to deal with these monsters unleashed back into civil society and the conscripts had the future prospect of doing 10 more camps of a month or so each hanging over their heads.
Is it not surprising then that South Africa had huge amounts of confused and angry testosterone fueled young white males causing havoc, drinking excessively, drugging and whoring during that time.
As my family say to me to this day – they observed how, when the army used to come up as a topic of conversation, I would literally shut down and put on a poker face. To this day I am deeply ashamed of my part in the SADF as a conscript and know that just admitting that will probably bring scorn upon my head. I, like many of my peers, do not have the ability or skill or institutional support to deal with our shame so find it better to just tune out.
Now, for most of us, it is 30 years after leaving the SADF. Most of us have all experienced the “large automobile, beautiful house and beautiful wife” as sung about by Talking Heads and have tried to silently do penance for our sins as conscripts. But, what we do not realise is that we never had a chance. That stint in the SADF damaged us and the failure by the government of the day to fix the people that they broke has now come back to haunt our society.
A pattern I am discerning amongst my peers is one in which they suffer years of some form of abuse (as they experienced and had to silently accept in the SADF), slip into depression (but don’t talk about or acknowledge it as real men don’t have feelings!), let themselves go (health, family relationships and work suffers) and then wonder; “Well, how did I get here?”
No doubt the ‘punishment’ being dished out to white males who are seen as a pariah through the dictates of BEE also has some bearing on the general malaise that many 50 – 60 year-olds are experiencing as their wives leave them, kids give up on them and they lose direction.
BUT, I am a firm believer in fixing the root cause and in my mind the root cause is something that no-one wants to talk about or acknowledge and that is the great WRONG done to white males forced to fight what is now acknowledged as an unjust war against fellow South Africans and then for the government to spit those youngsters out, without any form of formal counseling, after using them for cannon fodder.
Maybe it will help my fellow South Africans to know that we (as conscripts during apartheid) acknowledge our part in farging the country up and have also suffered deeply as a result of that. Let’s not make the mistake of living in and blaming each other for what is in the past. Let us rather close that chapter and forgive one another whilst we come together and make South Africa a better place for all!
* Once in a Lifetime from the 1980 Talking Heads Album Remain in Light with lyrics written by Brian Eno, Christopher Frantz, David Byrne, Jerry Harrison and Tina Weymouth:
And you may find yourself
Living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself
In another part of the world
And you may find yourself
Behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house
With a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, well
How did I get here?
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again after the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again after the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Water dissolving and water removing
There is water at the bottom of the ocean
Under the water, carry the water
Remove the water at the bottom of the ocean!
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again in the silent water
Under the rocks, and stones there is water underground
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again after the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go to?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right? Am I wrong?
And you may say yourself, “My God! What have I done?”
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again in to the silent water
Under the rocks and stones, there is water underground
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again after the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Look where my hand was
Time isn’t holding up
Time isn’t after us
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Letting the days go by (same as it ever was)
Letting the days go by (same as it ever was)
Once in a lifetime
Letting the days go by
Letting the days go by
Related reading: Why someone said to me; “Buying non alcoholic beer is like paying a hooker to cuddle!”
Alan Straton
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