when was compulsory military service stopped in south africa
End Conscription Campaign On 24 August 1993 Minister of Defence Kobie Coetsee announced the end of conscription. In 1994 there would be no more call-ups for the one-year initial training. But although conscription was suspended it was not entirely abandoned. Indeed, in January 1994 for the first time there was no call-up for initial training, but at the same time conscripts who had already undergone training could be subject to "camp" call-ups, as they were technically subject to military law rather than civilian law. Actually "camp" call-ups reached record proportions over the period of the April 1994 elections, and for the first time in history the ECC called on conscripts to consider these call-ups to be different from previous call-ups.