Just who was Morris Isaacson?

SUZANNE BELLING

“He had a vision, wisdom, motivation and a belief; his thinking was ahead of his time,” said Kevin about his grandfather after whom the famous Soweto school is named.

Speaking to the Jewish Report from his home in Kfar Saba, Israel, on the eve of Youth Day in South Africa, Kevin said, “I never got to hear him or feel him (Morris died on April 11, 1953, before Kevin was born) but I am proud to be part of his legacy. It was unpopular to do what he did in his time, but whereas many people just talked, he actually did.”

Earlier this year, Kevin, his wife Dr Atara Isaacson, an educator, and Stanley Sapire, former chief justice of Swaziland, visited the Morris Isaacson School. After Kevin’s father, Jeffrey, died last year, he wanted to find out more about his grandfather and see for himself the fruits of his grandfather’s philanthropy.

Morris came to South Africa from Lithuania in 1896. His father had been an innkeeper and when the Russian government at the time, introduced a monopoly on the sale of alcohol products, Morris decided to emigrate to South Africa.

He was met at the Johannesburg station by a “landsman” who took him by carriage to one of his relatives. The family member gave Morris lunch and two gold sovereigns, but did not have room to put him up.

The young man took a job as a shop assistant in Brakpan, on the East Rand and, later, while working in Pretoria, he was taught English by a missionary. Morris became enamoured of the philosophy of Theodor Herzl and formed the first Zionist Society in Pretoria, where he also witnessed the swearing-in of President Paul Kruger on his re-election as president of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek.

Morris tried his hand at about a dozen different occupations, from working in a mineral factory to selling insurance.

According to his great friend, the late Richard Feldman, Morris was “a born socialist” who took part in the 1913 strike and playing a prominent role in the 1922 Rand miners’ strike. Morris had been elected to the national executive of the SA Labour Party.

He was among those who established the Labour Party weekly, “Forward” and was a protagonist of the formation of the Jewish War Relief Fund. By the end of the First World War, Morris was a prominent Jewish leader, president of the Jewish Guild, treasurer of the Jewish War Memorial Fund and, later, chairman of the SA Jewish Orphanage.

In its early years, the orphanage was run by the Jewish Ladies’ Communal League, which was encountering difficulties with the rapid influx of orphans from Europe after the war, particularly the Ochberg orphans in 1921.

Under pressure from Morris and others, the League “abdicated” and Morris found himself with an orphanage on his hands, one that managed to take in all the Jewish orphans.

Morris was the prime mover behind moving the orphanage to new premises in Parktown to “Arcadia”, the magnificent former home of Randlord Lionel Phillips. Morris did not like using the term “orphanage”, so the home became known simply as Arcadia. Now part of the Chevrah Group, it retains its name.

Through his activities in the orphanage, he met Mavis Myers, daughter of the matron. They married in 1921. She took charge of the 100 overseas orphans and became known as “Mummy Mavis”.

Morris’ business career as a trader and hotelier flourished. He and Mavis moved to Warmbaths (now Bela Bela) in 1926, where they ran the Warmbaths Hotel for many years.

He and Feldman remained lifelong friends. In Morris’ later years, Feldman, who was an MEC in the mid-1940s, was instrumental in involving him in black education. After Mavis died in 1949, Morris was the major contributor to the establishment of the Mavis Isaacson Hall, in Moroka, which served as a day creche for working mothers in Soweto.

Morris’ will provided a substantial sum for the Morris Isaacson Foundation, which inter alia granted hundreds of bursaries to black students.

The work of the Foundation led to the building of the Morris Isaacson Primary School in 1953 and, two years later, the famous Morris Isaacson Secondary School was opened.

Among the foremost anti-apartheid activist leaders who passed through the school’s portals, was Murphy Morobe. The learners took their studies seriously, but on June 16, 1976, the school was pivotal in the protest walk from the Naledi School to the Morris Isaacson School.

Students from numerous Soweto schools began to protest in the streets of the township in response to the introduction of Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in local schools. It is estimated that 20 000 learners took part in the protests. They were met with fierce police brutality. The number of protesters killed by police is usually given as 176, but estimates of up to 700 have been made.

In remembrance of these events, June 16 is now a public holiday.

Morris’ name lives on through the school named after him and evokes positive memories of one of the first Jews to actively oppose the Nationalist regime.

“It’s our heritage,” says Kevin, whose parents Myra and the late Jeffrey were vehemently anti-apartheid. It was one of the reasons they made aliyah in 1963 when Kevin was only three. Kevin returned to South Africa for visits when he was a young boy, “but my trip to Soweto this year was my first real one in some 50 years”.