Copelyn – SA Jews must remember their apartheid past

GEOFF SIFRIN

 Johnny Copelyn was head of the politically active SACTWU during apartheid. He was elected to Parliament for the ANC in the post-apartheid elections. In 1997 he moved to investment holding company Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI), when SACTWU’s investment funds were used to buy majority ownership in what was then a privately held company. He is today head of Tsogo Sun.

 Remembering at Pesach “how things used to be” as slaves in Egypt, is important in a special way for South African Jews who lived in apartheid, says Johnny Copelyn. The Jewish story resonates with their past here. He described circumstances he lived in when growing up.

“Black people couldn’t enter a city – any city – unless they had a permit. They could only come to seek work. If they couldn’t find work, they had to get out within 30 days. They had to come alone, they couldn’t bring their families.

If they lost their jobs, they had to go through the whole exercise again, getting out of town, then applying for permits to come back in. The only way out of this was to work for one person for at least 10 years, more than one for 15 years, or to have been born in a “white” area.

“Every black person had to carry a passport which could be solicited from them any time, day or night. They were required to produce it. We had shops where black people were encouraged to shop.

“I remember a department store in Johannesburg, coming there with my grandmother. We came across a black woman with her child in distress. She asked if I knew where there was a toilet for black people. I had no idea black people would ever want to go to the toilet. My grandmother asked: “Where do they go?” and suggested she try the basement.”

Black workers could not defend themselves at work, since they had no unions. To participate in collective bargaining, unions had to exclude Africans from membership. Employers hired and fired black workers at a whim.

“Black people were fired for being slow, cheeky, sullen, being union members, or for any reason. It was as simple as this: ‘You’re fired, get out’. A 1974 booklet on the textile industry from the National Productivity Institute said the labour turnover for less than one year’s service was 119 per cent. So, of every 100 black workers hired, virtually all were fired during the first year.”

Copelyn asks uncomfortable questions from South African Jews: “In the seder story, G-d sent Moses to talk to Pharaoh, resulting in the Ten Plagues. It says G-d hardened Pharaoh’s heart, to have no pity.

“Did we [SA Jews] find that our hearts were hardened to the suffering? The most striking fact is that we lived as Jews, as whites, comfortably, notwithstanding this humiliation around us. I don’t say we didn’t have pity or sympathy, but by and large we were pretty comfortable the way things were. Not only the laws were like that, we ourselves were like that.

“I grew up in a house, for example, where our domestic had her own cup, an enamel cup especially for her. My friends were the same.

“Her hands were great for washing our plates, but the idea that her lips might touch our cups was a whole other story. We had a concept of ‘boy’s meat’, which was horse meat. I grew up believing black people wanted to eat ‘boy’s meat’. When you think that’s actually the meat people really wanted, then [things are very wrong].”

Eventually in the 1980s, apartheid’s rigidity began to erode. Bizarre situations arose. “It started when I was a child, with black people being appointed traffic officers. There was a vibrant debate in newspapers over whether it was proper for a black traffic cop to give a white person a traffic ticket. And if the white person resisted, what was to happen?”

After 1994, Copelyn went to parliament as an ANC member. When Finance Minister Liebenberg suddenly took ill, Trevor Manuel was appointed, the first finance minister who wasn’t white. In response, the conversation in his community was that the finance minister was not really the man to watch for; while [white] Chris Stolz remained Reserve Bank governor, things would be okay.

“Then Tito Mboweni took over the Reserve Bank, and we arrived in the 21st century.”

Copelyn has little patience for how South Africans complain about the country today. “A play in Cape Town with John Kani called ‘Missing’, had a line: ‘We fought for freedom and what did we get? We got democracy.’ Well, here we are 20 years later moaning and groaning as loudly as Amiram and Dotan <<?>> in the Torah.

“When the Jews left slavery, they got to the first place and didn’t have enough water: moan, groan. They got to the edge of the Red Sea, didn’t know how to cross: moan, groan.” And so on. Twenty years into democracy and freedom, Jews should look at themselves honestly and never forget how comfortable they were under apartheid.

He also believes South African whites have been blessed with something Egyptians never had – being liberated from the role of “slave masters”. Egyptians continued owning slaves, although not Jewish, and never experienced the freedom a slave master acquires when the slave is let go.

“Whenever slaves achieve liberation, free people celebrate the struggles of slaves to be free. But the slave master is also freed. We no longer are cast in the slave master roles we once were in. Each of us was granted a piece of liberation and it has made us somewhat more human.”