White Urges Solidarity With Black Activists : S. Africa Doctor Chooses Jail Over Army

A white physician, widely known for his medical work in the black squatter settlements outside Cape Town, was sentenced Thursday to a year and nine months in prison for refusing to do further military service.

Dr. Ivan Toms, 35, had told a Cape Town court that he would rather go to prison than serve another day in the South African armed forces.

“This is the one time I have a choice as a white South African,” Toms declared. “I can choose to go to prison rather than be part of the South African defense forces.”

Toms, a prominent member of the End Conscription Campaign, said he regards South Africa’s continued administration of neighboring Namibia, where many soldiers serve, as illegal under international law and the deployment of white troops in many of the country’s black townships as immoral.

He said before his trial began Monday that an important factor in his decision to go to prison rather than continue to serve 2-month annual call-ups as an army reservist was the need for liberal whites to show solidarity with black anti-apartheid activists who are the target of a government crackdown.

“It is incredibly important at this moment that whites are not just seen to be talking but are actually making a costly commitment to the struggle for the liberation of our country,” Toms said.

Religious objectors may choose to work in government departments as an alternative to military service, but Toms said that political objectors face a stark choice--prison or flight from the country.

“I hope my stand will in some small way bring pressure on the government to change the law so there are some alternatives available to conscripts,” he said.

Had Noncombatant Status

Toms had completed, in 1979, the two years of basic military service required of all white South African men and had been granted noncombatant status as a result of his strong moral convictions.

After the army assisted the police in the occupation and clearing of the Crossroads squatter settlement outside Cape Town, where Toms ran a medical clinic, he declared that he would not take part in any further military activities and would not wear his army uniform again.

“It was having seen the viciousness of apartheid that moved me to say that I was willing to take the severe consequences of refusing to serve in the army,” Toms said earlier this week. “Having watched them destroy a community and intensify the oppression, the sheer subjugation of our people, how could I put on that uniform again?”

Magistrate A. P. Kotze’s sentence was the maximum possible under the law--1 1/2 times the number of days of Toms’ remaining reserve obligation.

Kotze said he found it sad that Toms was taking his protest against conscription so far that his services as a physician were lost to the community and that, although not a criminal, he would go to prison. If Toms should change his position and agree to serve, Kotze said, he would be released from prison.

Toms told his lawyers to appeal the sentence but not to apply for bail. He began serving his sentence immediately.

In other developments, a legislator in the tribal homeland of Kwazulu was shot to death at his home in troubled Natal province as he watched television with his children.

Petrus Mbatha, 36, was a member of Inkatha, the predominantly Zulu political movement led by Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, and suspicion for his killing fell on the rival United Democratic Front. Police said that an AK-47 rifle was used in the killing.

Nearly 500 people have been killed in the feud between the two groups over the past 15 months.