Jews ingrained in Soweto’s history

JORDAN MOSHE

These names adorn a wall in Kliptown, bearing testimony to the role they and other South African Jews played across the decades of Soweto’s history.

Their names speak for the involvement of South African Jewry in Soweto, a legacy which spans across decades.

Kliptown, the oldest residential district of Soweto, was first laid out in 1891, and Jews lived there from the start. Their presence in Kliptown predates the establishment of Johannesburg itself, with a number of Jewish merchants and tradesmen settling in the area towards the turn of the century, along with Christians, Muslims, and Indians.

Jewish shop owners operated alongside their religiously diverse counterparts in this multi-racial melting pot, forging a unique understanding that remains among residents today.

From 1903, the area became home to several rapidly expanding informal settlements. This then led to the establishment of South West Township (Soweto) in the 1930s, when the Nationalist government started separating races. Soweto became the largest black city in South Africa.

In 1955, Kliptown and its community secured an important place in the history of the anti-apartheid struggle. On 26 June, the Freedom Charter (a vision for a united, non-racial, and democratic South Africa) was adopted, bringing Black activists together with Indian, Coloured and White organisations.

Among these were prominent Jewish activists such as Leon Levy, then president of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) and a signatory of the Freedom Charter; ANC stalwart Joy Coplan; and Lionel “Rusty” Bernstein, who played a crucial role in drafting the charter itself.

Three thousand delegates came from all over the country to adopt the charter in a coal yard owned by Jewish furniture dealer George Klein of Epstein & Klein &.

“We owned the space adjacent to the store, and were asked if we could provide the ANC [African National Congress] with space for its gathering,” recounts his son, Ivor Klein. The government went on to develop the area into Freedom Square, and declared it a national monument, buying him out of his share in the space in 2000.

The day would go down in history, leaving an impression on those in attendance for years to come. “We could not persuade ourselves to stay away,” writes Bernstein. “There was too much of that year’s life and hopes invested in it. We had to see it for ourselves.”

Coplan was a 17-year-old activist at the time, and attended the gathering without her parent’s knowledge. “I came from Cape Town with Albie Sachs to watch the meeting,” she recounts. “I had to be there. I remember police being virtually everywhere, waiting to come in and arrest people. It was probably best that my parents didn’t know I was there.”

They witnessed what was then the biggest delegate gathering the country had ever known. This momentous day was recognised even then for the huge impact it would make on the country.

Levy recalled (in a speech delivered at a Jewish communal event in 2015), “The Charter was crafted from thousands of demands written on scraps of paper at hundreds of meetings held in factories and farms, townships, rural areas, universities, and wherever people lived or worked. It endures as a democratic beacon which proudly belongs to all of us.” After its adoption, the charter was at the centre of the four year-long treason trial. Levy was one of those put on trial, and eventually acquitted.

Jews continued to run businesses in Kliptown for years after that, witnessing another hallmark event in the brutal repression of the protest against Bantu education (the official education system for Black South Africans) on 16 June 1976.

“I was in Soweto that day, and watched as the riots broke out,” Klein recalls. “It was terribly violent, and it’s a miracle that I came out of it. It was quite an experience. You don’t want to know what violence I saw.”

Traumatic though its history may be, Klein stresses that Jews are an indelible part of Soweto’s past. “We’re all part of the story,” he says. “I made deliveries for a business that my grandfather had started in 1905. Together with Muslims, Indians, Chinese, and plenty others, we traded for years in Kliptown. Until 1992, I drove through Soweto daily. I never had one problem or difficulty. We are part of that history.”