Passing of communal giant, Mervyn Smith

DAVID SAKS

Pictured: Communal leader Mervyn Smith, alongside former President Nelson Mandela and the late Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris, when Mandela visited the Sea Point Shul in May 1994.

PHOTOGRAPH SUPPLIED

While born in Vereeniging in the then Transvaal, Smith lived most of his life in the Cape Province, initially in Vosburg in the Karoo and thereafter in Bellville.

 He later practised law in Bellville, where he also played cricket for 25 years and eventually was made life president of the Bellville Cricket Club. Other positions he held outside of the Jewish community included those of president of the Law Societies of South Africa, chairman of the Performing Arts Council of South Africa and Cape Performing Arts Board and chairman of the Cape Town City Ballet.

Parallel to these activities, Smith was involved in Jewish affairs from an early age, being active in Habonim and serving as chairman of the University of Cape Town branch of the Students Jewish Association.

He was first elected to the Cape Council of the Board of Deputies in the 1970s, serving two terms as chairman between 1983 and 1987. In 1991, he became the first-ever person outside of Johannesburg to be elected national chairman of the Board. During his tenure, he was instrumental in establishing the African Jewish Congress to act as the representative, co-ordinating body for the Jewish communities of sub-Saharan Africa and served continually as its president for the remainder of his life.

His growing stature as an international Jewish leader was demonstrated by his appointment as a vice president of the World Jewish Congress and, in May last year, as co-chairman of its policy council. He was also a director of the Claims Conference for Material Claims against Germany, and for many years represented South Africa on that body.

Always deeply opposed to apartheid, Smith was at the forefront of those within the SAJBD pushing for the organisation to adopt a firm moral position against it.These efforts bore fruit during the 1980s when, inter alia, the Board adopted a resolution unequivocally condemning apartheid at its national conference in 1985.

Smith later remembered one of his proudest moments as being when it was announced by SABC News that the Cape Council of the Board had condemned the Group Areas Act.

During the years of transition to multiracial democracy, Smith was adamant that the Jewish community should not only welcome the process, but should participate in and contribute to it.

His chairmanship was very much focused on pursuing those goals, which underpin the vision and strategy of the Board to this day. For his “contributions to reconciliation, change and empowerment in South Africa in the fields of business and/or art, science, sport or philanthropy”, Smith became only the second Capetonian to receive the Lexus Lifetime Achiever Award at the Jewish Achiever Awards ceremony.

Another area in which Smith was extensively involved was in combating of anti-Semitism, particularly in the legal sphere. One of Cape Town’s leading attorneys, he devoted countless hours gratis to fighting the Board’s battles, of which the epic hate speech cases against Radio 786 and Cosatu’s International Relations Spokesman Bongani Masuk, were just two of many examples. 

He was especially passionate about Holocaust commemoration and education, and in that regard was a long-serving chairman of the board of trustees of the South African Holocaust and Genocide Foundation. 

For generations of Jewish communal leaders and professionals, Smith provided an invaluable source of support and advice. Michael Bagraim, who in 2003 became the second Capetonian to be elected as SAJBD chairman, described him as “a friend, adviser and mentor” who had been “instrumental in advising and guiding me in most of the positions” he had held both within the community and outside. Smith was a long-acting attorney for the Democratic Alliance and last week was awarded the Democracy Award by the party.

One of the Jewish professional who worked especially closely with Smith was Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft, CEO of the African Jewish Congress. In a statement, he wrote that Smith’s passing was “a grievous loss” to the Jewish community, and that his “presence, his wisdom and his experience will be sorely missed, not only by his family, but by all his friends and colleagues”.

Smith is survived by his children Paul, Deborah, Raphael and Abigail, seven grandchildren and brother, David. He was predeceased by his wife Tamar, a teacher who headed the SAJBD’s Religious Instruction Department, and a daughter, Rinah.