SA Jews remember Sharpeville

DAVID SAKS

The week kicked off with a high-powered anti-racism conference under the auspices of the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) in Midrand and culminated on Human Rights Day with a moving memorial gathering at Sharpeville, site of one of the most notorious apartheid-era atrocities.

In between, Jewish youth leaders joined in building bridges with the Greek community at this year’s Greek National Day, while learners at King David Linksfield and Yeshiva College were addressed by one of the heroes of the anti-apartheid struggle, Leon Levy.   

SAJBD Diplomatic Liaison Chaya Singer was upbeat in the wake of a week she described as “hectic, but deeply fulfilling”. It had been inspiring, she said, to join with other communities in reaffirming South Africa’s commitment to fundamental human rights values, and to see how much the role of the Jewish community in combating racism was recognised and valued in the broader society.

Regarding the SAHRC conference, she commented on how impressed she was by how much the Commission did, and how gratifying it was that it saw the SAJBD as being integral partners in this regard.

Representatives of the SAJBD, SAUJS and the head boys and girls of King David Linksfield and Yeshiva College were among those attending the Greek National Day celebration and ‪#‎takeonracism event at Saheti school on Sunday. SAUJS Chairman Dani Hovsha, in her enthusiastically received message, pointed out how over the centuries, the Greek and Jewish cultures had informed and enriched one another, while retaining their own distinctiveness.

Likewise South Africans, rather than seeing those whose beliefs and cultures differed from their own as being inferior or threatening, should instead appreciate and learn from them. The SAJBD took the opportunity of meeting with Minister of Arts and Culture Nathi Mthethwa, who was also at the event.

For Human Rights Day, the SAJBD partnered with the Hellenic Italian Portuguese (HIP) Alliance in sending a delegation to Sharpeville for the memorial ceremony. There are 69 pillars at the memorial site representing those killed during an anti-pass law demonstration on March 21, 1960. Each delegate took his or her place before a pillar, together with a family member of one of the victims who spoke about their memories of those who had died.

In his message delivered at the cemetery afterwards, SAJBD Gauteng Council chairman Shaun Zagnoev stressed that remembering the victims of apartheid had to go hand in hand with applying the lessons of the past to our own times. 

“The central lesson is that never again will we allow people in South Africa to be oppressed, exploited and deprived of their fundamental human rights. Never again will we permit South Africa to become a society where people are killed, imprisoned, banned or otherwise silenced merely for exercising their right to protest” he said.

Zagnoev concluded that if the lessons from the tragedies of the past could be applied in creating a just, compassionate society, then the victims of Sharpeville would not have died in vain.