When homosexuality was criminalised and refused-conscription was treasonous

Stripped tells the story of what happened to me, Thomas Budge, in the years following my high school graduation in 1970.

The Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) played a significant and controversial role in shaping and justifying the apartheid system in South Africa. The DRC had a close relationship with Afrikaner nationalism and viewed itself as the guardian of traditional Afrikaner values, including Christian morality. Guided by the church's rigid, principled beliefs, the government crafted societal ideals and moral values around the church's dogma. The church fully supported apartheid until 1986.

I graduated from high school in December 1970. Pieter Willem Botha (P. W. Botha) was the Minister of Defence at the time. Botha initially joined the Ossewabrandwag, an Afrikaner nationalist group sympathetic to the Nazis, but later shifted his allegiance to Afrikaner Christian nationalism. He eventually became one of South Africa's Prime Ministers and the country's first State President. Botha's father fought against the British in the Second Boer War, during which the British interned his mother in one of their concentration camps.

The mistreatment of Boer civilians in these camps led some English, Scottish, and Irish men to become the first conscientious objectors in South Africa. In 1957, South Africa passed laws under the Defence Act that legislated against conscientious objection, criminalising those who resisted military service due to religious, private, or personal convictions. The army viewed these defectors as traitors and punished them under the Military Discipline Code.

During my high school years, apartheid South Africa was at war with Angola. This "Angolan Bush War" began in August 1966, and the military despatched many of its young conscripts to fight in it. South Africa fought the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) and the armed wing of the South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO), both of which the apartheid government labelled as terrorist organisations, using this propaganda to stoke public anti-communist sentiment.

The saying back then was that the army turned boys into men, yet many of the boys who fought in Angola became victims of the war. Decades later, many of these men still suffer from severe post-traumatic stress disorders due to the atrocities the army expected them to commit in the fight against the so-called communist terrorists.

In 1967, the South African Defence Force (SADF) began mandatory conscription, requiring every able-bodied white male to enlist for two years of military service. However, the apartheid Defence Force never called upon black men to serve their country; this was a "patriotic right" reserved exclusively for whites.

Among P. W. Botha's greatest opponents was Helen Suzman, a vocal South African anti-apartheid activist and politician. Helen was the Progressive Party's only member of parliament for thirteen years. For South Africa's white minority opposed to apartheid, this left-wing party was their only legal voice of dissent within the country.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Jehovah's Witnesses in South Africa faced significant challenges. The organisation feared that the apartheid government might ban the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, the administrative corporation of the Jehovah's Witness organisation.

In 1967, police and citizens in Malawi beat and killed many Jehovah's Witnesses, burning their houses, meeting halls, Bibles, and all Watchtower publications. Jehovah's Witnesses refused to carry a card endorsing and giving allegiance to the Malawi Congress Party.

My parents were Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Watchtower Society groomed us children from an early age never to stand during the playing of the national anthem, nor to sing any of its verses. Moreover, the organisation instructed us never to salute the national flag, attend religious education classes, take part in school cadet training, or actively engage in any competitive sport, as these were "against Jehovah's will." Jehovah's Witnesses saw this as political neutrality, but the government, neighbourhood communities, and other religious groups viewed it as an act of resistance, even treason. For us children, ostracism was part of our daily lives, and we grew up expecting to be principal victims of religious and state persecution.

The Watchtower Society insisted that Jehovah's Witnesses take a stance against military service. Their political neutrality stemmed from a strict adherence to biblical principles, particularly passages like Isaiah 2:4, which speaks of turning "swords into ploughshares" and refusing to "learn war anymore." This pacifist position put Jehovah's Witnesses at odds with governments worldwide, including the apartheid-era South African regime.

In 1969, the year before my matriculation, as was the case for all young men my age, the law required all eligible white males to register for military service. I refused to do so on grounds of conscience, and in July of that year, at the age of sixteen, I appeared before an Inferior Court at Defence Headquarters in Johannesburg. There, the presiding officer in charge of the military court-martial gave me a stern warning and convinced me that "registering" was not an unconscionable act. I relented and filled in the registration form, notifying the Defence Force that I had become eligible for military service.

Two years later, in May 1971, I received my first set of call-up papers, instructing me to report for duty in Pretoria a few weeks later. The military had assigned me to their Medical Corps Training Centre. I never went. The Defence Force then charged me and summoned me to appear before a magistrate in Pretoria in October of that year.

Jehovah's Witnesses who refused to serve on religious grounds faced harsh penalties, including imprisonment. The state saw their refusal not just as a violation of military duty but as a threat to national security. Imprisoned under harsh conditions, some Witnesses, like me, faced indefinite sentences due to repeated refusals.

The late 1960s and early 1970s were a time when homosexuality was heavily stigmatised in South Africa. The apartheid regime had criminalised same-sex relationships, and the government, influenced by conservative Christian thinking, enforced laws that oppressed LGBTQ+ individuals. The Dutch Reformed Church's stance on homosexuality was rooted in a literal interpretation of the Bible, which condemned homosexual acts. The church considered homosexuality a sin that could be "cured" or "treated." It viewed homosexuality as a moral failing rather than a natural orientation and advocated for heterosexual marriage as the only acceptable expression of sexual relations. The Watchtower Society took a similar view on homosexuality, readily excommunicating (disfellowshipping) and shunning any Jehovah's Witness found guilty of such unrepentant behaviour.

There was a popular myth among young military conscripts at the time, which suggested that homosexuals would get a G5 (Medical Discharge) from the South African Defence Force. However, the army held a different view, believing that the "practice of homosexuality is considered to be an undermining factor in the SADF [... that] damages the image of the SADF, undermines discipline, and can lead to blackmail and security risks." Instead of rejecting gay conscripts from service, the army intervened and tried to change them.

Part of the military's management of gay people occurred in Ward 22, the psychiatric ward in the Voortrekkerhoogte military hospital. Gay soldiers who could not hide their sexuality often found their way to the ward because of the trauma associated with victimisation.

The hospital's psychiatric units were "the creation of Dr Aubrey Levin [... who] joined the army after qualifying for a medical degree and went on to study psychiatry on military bursaries. He worked under the supervision of Lt General Cockcroft, the South African Surgeon General from 1969 to 1977. Upon his retirement, Cockcroft became active in ultra-right organisations." Levin had a sinister reputation for trying to "cure" homosexual conscripts. "Thousands of [...] gays were subjected to electric shock therapy, hormone treatment and chemical castration throughout the 1970s and 80s." Dr Levin was "convinced he could make heterosexuals out of gay patients." Every new patient was "put on Valium [and the] ward orderlies carried pistols" to prevent escapes. "Dr Levin also subjected his patients to narco-analysis or a 'truth drug,' involving the slow injection of a barbiturate before the questioning began. Dr Levin does not deny its use." The military pressurised some gay men "into [having sex-change] surgery by military psychologists after other methods failed." The army named this their Aversion Project.

As a Jehovah's Witness, I refused conscription into the apartheid military, which led to imprisonment and solitary confinement. As a young gay man, I struggled to reconcile my sexuality with the strict doctrines of the Watchtower Society and the general expectations, morals, and legal demands imposed by the apartheid government. The audio drama podcast Stripped tells the true story of my experiences as a gay Jehovah's Witness teenager during this time in apartheid history.