Antisemitism in South Africa

The history of the Jews in South Africa has been marked by periods of official and unofficial anti-Semitism.

Before apartheid

During the thirties many Nationalist Party leaders and wide sections of the Afrikaner people came strongly under the influence of the Nazi movement which dominated Germany from 1933. There were many reasons for this. Germany was the traditional enemy of Britain, and whoever opposed Britain appeared a friend of the Nationalists. Many Nationalists, moreover, believed that the opportunity to re-establish their lost republic would come with the defeat of the British Empire in the international arena. The more belligerent Hitler became, the further hopes rose that the day of Afrikanerdom was about to dawn.

The National Party of D F Malan closely associated itself with policies of the Nazis. Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe was controlled under the Aliens Act and came to an end during this period. Although Jews were accorded status as Europeans, they were not accepted into white society. The Kelvin Grove sports club for example had an exclusive Europeans Only and No Jews policy until recent times. Some 11 such sports clubs had similar policies. Many Jews lived in mixed race areas such as District Six, from where they were forcibly removed to make way for a whites-only development. The architect of grand apartheid Hendrick Verwoerd studied in Germany where he obtained a degree in psychology. Many of the apartheid eugenics programmes that targeted native Africans can be said to have been inspired by racist theories which dominated the campuses of the time, as evidenced by the use of Nazi race indexing tools.

In 1936, Verwoerd joined a deputation of six professors in protesting against the admission to South Africa of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany."Following these demands of the Nationalist Party, Eric Louw, later Foreign Minister, introduced another anti-Semitic bill that strongly resembled Nazi legislation - the Aliens Amendment and Immigration Bill of 1939. His bill was a means of suppressing all Jews. This bill suggested that Jews threatened to overpower Protestants in the business world and were innately cunning and manipulative and that Jews were a danger to society. To support his claim, Louw maintained that Jews were involved in the Bolshevik Revolution and therefore intended to spread Communism worldwide. This bill defined Jews as anyone with parents who were at least partly Jewish regardless of actual religious faith or practices."

Another organization with which the Nationalists found much in common during the thirties was the ' South African Gentile National Socialist Movement', headed by one Johannes von Strauss von Moltke, whose object was to combat and destroy the alleged 'perversive influence of the Jews in economics, culture, religion, ethics, and statecraft and to re-establish European Aryan control in South Africa for the welfare of the Christian peoples of South Africa'.

Apartheid era

The 1956 Treason Trial saw Nelson Mandela along with a group of mostly Jewish men and women, arrested for treason. This resulted in accusations of a Jewish conspiracy to overthrow the white government and a plot involving communism. The group of Jews included Joe Slovo, Ruth First, Ben Turok, Leon Levy and Lionel Bernstein. They escaped conviction only to face another trial in 1960 known as the Rivonia Trial. This larger trial included the Zionist Arthur Goldreich, Denis Goldberg, Harold Wolpe, James Kantor and Lionel Bernstein.

During the 60s, Oswald Mosley, the British fascist leader, was a frequent visitor to South Africa, where he was received by the Prime Minister and other members of the Cabinet. At one time Mosley had two functioning branches of his organization in South Africa, and one of his supporters, Derek Alexander, was stationed in Johannesburg as his main agent.

Upon Verwoerd's assassination in 1966, BJ Vorster was elected by the National Party to replace him. Vorster had been a supporter of Hitler during WWII, his policy towards Jews in his own country however can best be described as ambivalent.

The 1980s saw the rise of far-right neo-Nazi groups such as the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging under Eugene Terreblanche. The AWB modeled itself after Hitler's National Socialist Party replete with fascist regalia and an emblem resembling the swastika.

There were numerous similarities between the laws passed by the Nazis against German Jews and the laws passed by the Afrikaner Nationalists against the Blacks. The scholar, Mzimela Sipo Elijah, observed similarities in theology between the 'role of the Deutsche Christen and the Dutch Reformed Church, on the one hand, and that of the Confessing Church and the English-speaking Churches on the other." This is known as the "apartheid heresy" controversy which became important in the struggle against institutional racism in South Africa.

Post Apartheid era

In May 1998 a Cape community radio station run by a Muslim organisation and aimed at Muslims, Radio 786 broadcast a programme denying the Holocaust. The resulting legal action brought by the South African Jewish Board of Deputies remains unresolved after 14 years. Radio 786 refuses to apologise to the Jewish community and has stood by its version of events.

The 2001 Durban Conference against Racism (CAR) meeting was marked by clashes over the Middle East and the legacy of slavery, and coincided with attacks on Israel and anti-Israel demonstrations at a parallel conference of non-governmental organizations. Canada, followed by the U.S. and Israel walked out midway through the 2001 conference over a draft resolution that, in their opinion, singled out Israel for criticism and likened Zionism to racism. [2]

In 2009 South Africa's deputy foreign minister Fatima Hajaig claimed that "Jewish money controls America and most Western countries." The local Jewish community objected but did not extricate an apology.

In 2010 community journalist David Robert Lewis was anathematised by the Labour Court of South Africa in a decision which created a new class of Jewish undesirables. This for attending a mixed race night-club on a Friday night without permission from his employer. The court held that since Lewis was supposedly in breach of his religion, he could not claim compensation for unfair discrimination. Lewis still maintains that he is a progressive, heterodox and humanistic Jew and that his membership of the Orthodox version of Judaism lapsed when he engaged in an affair with a Muslim during apartheid.

In 2013 ANC Western Cape leader Marius Fransman claimed ninety-eight percent of land and property owners in Cape Town are “white” and “Jewish”. The accusation turned out to be false.