Jews must get out of ‘shadows of SA’s body politic’

Errol Horwitz

The lack of meaningful Jewish community involvement in political decision-making, or electioneering, is not a new phenomenon. It had its dawning in the apartheid era following Jewish establishment’s warning to all Jews not to awake the wrath of the regime.

Opposition to apartheid as a matter of policy was therefore unthinkable. Tacit, and at times, overt complicity in the evils of apartheid, was the accepted norm in spite of Judaism’s fundamental belief in the dignity of man. 

One simply has to recall the community’s misguided pride in the selection of a Jewish prosecutor bent on securing a death penalty conviction for Nelson Mandela and his co-accused. 

During apartheid a minority of South African Jewish activists courageously opposed apartheid. Some were either murdered, jailed, or exiled. Within the Jewish community they were stigmatised, regarded as political lepers, and a real and present danger to the wellbeing of the community.

The implications of the phrase “Am I my brother’s keeper?” in Genesis 4:1-9 was poignantly a non sequitur.

In this respect, I for one, despite the passage of time, have yet to put aside residual animus towards the Jewish establishment for abandoning those of us in the Struggle by jettisoning the centrality of freedom from political oppression embedded in Jewish thought. 

With the birth of the new South Africa in 1994, Jewish religious and secular leaders experienced an epiphany as far as race relations were concerned. Those in the liberation movement were no longer pariahs, but heroes, to be feted at every opportunity – quintessential hypocrisy disguised in new-found altruism.

Despite the Board’s assertion of “the Jewish community’s active and integral role in building South Africa”, the ruling party remains unpersuaded by the Jewish community’s “overnight” non-racial transformation, because of its disconnect to the suffering of the black population pre- and post-apartheid. 

Against this backdrop the Jewish community should no longer passively remain in the shadows of South Africa’s body politic; it must discard the shackles of the past, increase its visibility and unwaveringly enter the political arena, even if it means confronting anti-Semitic attacks, or accusations of racism for criticising a black government for lack of good governance. 

There is a rightful place for Jews at South Africa’s political table. But, sitting silently on the back seat of history is a perilous cop-out. It really is an issue of survival, failing which the plaintiff cry “that was the South African Jewish community that was” will be heard throughout Israel and the Diaspora. 

Fresnaye, Cape Town