South Africa 2006

 

In 2006 South Africa recorded its highest number of antisemitic incidents - 76 − since the commencement of detailed record keeping two decades ago. Antisemitic manifestations were of a more direct nature than in the past, and included a sharp increase in instances of verbal harassment and intimidation.

 

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

The Jewish population began to stabilize in the 2000s, at about 80,000, out of a total population of 46 million, following large-scale emigration as a result of the extended political and economic crisis in the two decades from 1980 leading up to the transition from white minority rule to democracy in 1994. The community is located primarily in the two urban centers of Johannesburg (50,000) and Cape Town (18,000), as well as in Durban (2,700), Pretoria (1,500), Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein, East London and the Greater Plettenberg Bay area.

The South African Jewish community remains highly cohesive and well-organized, with an impressive network of religious, educational, cultural and welfare institutions. Over 80 percent of Jewish children are enrolled in Jewish day schools and a similar proportion belongs to a religious congregation.

The South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) is the central representative organization and civil rights lobby of the Jewish community, with most of the country's Jewish communal organizations being affiliated to it. The SAJBD meets regularly with key political leaders from across the political spectrum and has been successful in forging a strong relationship with the ruling party at all levels of government. The Community Security Organization (CSO), which operates under the auspices of the SAJBD, ensues security at Jewish communal functions and at Jewish installations. The SAJBD and the CSO cooperate in monitoring antisemitism and taking appropriate action wherever possible, including lodging complaints with the police and following them up. Israel-related activities are overseen by the SA Zionist Federation, whose work is complemented by the Israel Centre (the latter having been established as an arm of the Jewish Agency in 2002). The SA Zionist Federation, assisted where necessary by the SAJBD, continued to run its Media Team, set up in 2003 to respond in the media to attacks on Israel. The SAJBD established a separate Communications Department at the end of 2004, with the aim of promoting local Jewish affairs and Jewish contributions to society.

Jews remain prominently represented at all levels of civil society including in the parliament and judiciary.

 

political parties and extra-parliamentary groups

Parliamentary Parties

The ruling party in South Africa is the African National Congress (ANC), which controls eight of the country's nine provinces and holds 70 percent of the 400 seats in the House of Assembly. The Official Opposition, which holds fifty seats, is the Democratic Alliance (DA). The latter's Jewish leader, Tony Leon, retired from politics at the end of 2006 after eleven years at the helm, during which time the party's support (mainly drawn from the ranks of the white minority) increased more than six-fold.

 

Extremist Groups

Antisemitism in South Africa today is largely confined to radical groupings within the country's 800,000-strong Muslim community. Of those based in Cape Town, the Muslim Judicial Council (MJC) openly backs extremist organizations such as Hamas and Hizballah, and its leaders have made antisemitic statements on a number of occasions. The Islamic Unity Convention (IUC) has been engaged in an extended court battle with the SAJBD over antisemitic broadcasting by its mouthpiece Radio 786 (see below). Qibla, founded in 1979, and led by Achmat Cassiem, has been largely dormant during the present decade. Qibla was allied to the now defunct People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD), a.k.a. Muslims Against Global Oppression/Muslims Against Illegitimate Leaders - a front for local Islamist militants − which was responsible for numerous bomb attacks against American, Jewish and various random targets in Cape Town in the period 1997−2000.

The Pretoria-based Media Review Network, a Muslim media advocacy group which promotes the ideologies of Muslim extremist organizations the world over, continues to be a vociferous presence in the South African media, propagating antisemitic material, including Holocaust denial, on its website.

In recent years, several South African Muslims have been arrested abroad on suspicion of being involved in planned or actual terrorist attacks. In July 2004, for example, two South Africans (Zoubair Ismail, 20, and Dr Feroze Ganchi, 30, of Fordsburg, Johannesburg) were arrested in Pakistan after a 15-hour gun battle with Pakistani police. During the raid, police recovered AK-47s, hand grenades, ammunition, computers, maps and several vests containing an estimated 10 kg of plastic explosives and several unknown chemical liquids in vials strapped to the devices. It was claimed that one of the South Africans was wearing an explosives vest at the time of his arrest.

In December 2005, it was revealed that an Israeli Arab found guilty of working with a Hizballah agent had allegedly been recruited by his brother-in-law in South Africa. In July, his wife's relatives had hosted him in South Africa and he and his brother-in-law had subsequently traveled to Uganda to meet the Hizballah agent there.

While it eschews overt antisemitism, the Palestinian Solidarity Committee is a vociferous anti-Israel voice that calls for the dissolution of the State of Israel and for the boycott of Israeli products. Various NGOs, including the Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI), also go beyond their respective mandates to single out Israel and its supporters for special criticism. During 2006, the SAJBD sharply criticized the FXI in the media for its long record of anti-Israel bias, which had resulted in Jewish organizations being singled out by it for disproportionate attack. For example, the organization strongly condemned reports that Minister Ronnie Kasrils, a vocal anti-Zionist Jew, had received threats from within the Jewish community; however, it failed to do likewise when the editor of the Mail & Guardian, Ferial Haffajee, was similarly threatened (by members of the Muslim community) for her decision to publish several of the controversial caricatures of Islamic Prophet Muhammad.

Far right white organizations are virtually dormant in South Africa, posing virtually no threat to the Jewish community today. Nevertheless, incidents of antisemitic harassment involving individual whites occasionally take place.

 

ANTISEMITIC ACTIVITIES

In 2006 South Africa recorded its highest number of antisemitic incidents since the commencement of detailed record keeping two decades ago. The prevalence of strong anti-Israel sentiment within the mainstream South African political, media and NGO culture clearly contributed to a more hostile atmosphere toward Jews and Jewish institutions and was the obvious motivation for at least half the incidents recorded. Antisemitic activities peaked during July-October, a period coinciding with the hostilities in Gaza and Lebanon and their aftermath. Antisemitic manifestations were of a more direct nature than in the past, and included a sharp increase in instances of verbal harassment and intimidation.

Seventy-nine antisemitic incidents were recorded in 2006, more than a three-fold increase over the previous year's total. The four months July-October alone saw twice as many antisemitic events as in the whole of 2005. They included verbal abuse, threats and intimidation (40), assault (4), vandalism (7 − cemeteries being the main target) and bomb threats (2). There were only a few instances of anonymous hate mail being received, in contrast to previous years when this was the main form of anti-Jewish harassment. More than half of the incidents took place in Johannesburg, with Cape Town accounting for most of the remainder.

In the assault cases, a Jewish youth was struck in the face with a bottle in a Johannesburg pub after objecting to an antisemitic joke and a group of Durban Jewish youths were drawn into an altercation at a Durban nightclub in the course of which one was called a "---ing Jew" and another was stabbed in the face with a screwdriver.

A Pretoria man in the process of converting to Orthodox Judaism and wearing a skullcap and tzitzit was threatened and insulted by a farmer for whom he was doing building work. The latter called him a Judenvark (Jewish pig) and pointed his rifle at him.

Anti-Jewish propaganda in the public realm occasionally surfaced. At a mass Muslim march held in Cape Town to protest against cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammad in Danish and other European newspapers, placards reading "Die Grootste Mites: Israel, Die Holocaust, Vryheid, Demokrasie" ("The greatest myths: Israel, the Holocaust, freedom, democracy") were among those displayed. A journalist interviewing some of the marchers noted that many Muslims blamed the Jews for the cartoons (Die Burger, 18 Feb.).

DA leader Tony Leon's Jewish background was again used against him and his party (see, for example, ASW 1999/2000) in the course of a municipal by-election in Cape Town in June. A pamphlet was distributed in the name of the African Muslim Party (but not, in fact, endorsed by it) prior to the election, reading: "Did you know Tony Leon and his Israeli wife are supporters of the Racist and Murderous Israeli Government policies.Tony Leon and his wife are Zionists themselves!.As Muslims, we are warned through the Quran to fight against oppression!" The DA, nevertheless, won the by-election comfortably.

At an academic seminar in Pretoria, sponsored by the Iranian government in December, ANC Member of Parliament Farida Mohamed cited The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a credible historic document and inferred that the historicity of the Holocaust was a matter of debate. ANC spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama subsequently reiterated his party's position that the Nazi genocide "should be condemned with the contempt that it deserves."

Muslim groupings continued in their efforts to organize boycotts of businesses that support Israel and sell Israeli produce. During the year, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the umbrella organization for the local trade union movement that claims a membership of two million, issued numerous strongly worded statements calling for South Africa to break off all relations with Israel. In November, COSATU supporters joined with sympathizers of the militant Muslim group Qibla in a protest march in Cape Town. A memorandum branding Israel an "illegitimate, terrorist state, racist, expansionist and chauvinistic. [with] no right to exist" was handed over to the foreign minister.

Following objections from the SAJBD, the Johannesburg branch of the Goethe Institute, the Federal Republic of Germany's worldwide cultural institution, cancelled a scheduled seminar on the Israel-Lebanon conflict, at which government Minister Ronnie Kasrils was to be keynote speaker. The Board had protested the extremely anti-Israel bias of the organizers of the event. Kasrils had previously likened Israel's tactics in Lebanon to those of the Nazis.

In the course of strike action against Karan Beef, a Jewish-owned company, antisemitic remarks were made by a representative of the SA Commercial, Catering Workers Union, namely: "This Boer is insolent, maybe he's Jewish, I don't know if he's Jewish, but if he's Jewish, comrades, we are going to force him to go back to Israel... If he's Jewish and loyal to Israel it's obvious how he came to own a place like this." The SAJBD lodged an official complaint with the union, which refused to apologize.

 

RESPONSES TO RACISM AND ANTISEMITISM

The main area of involvement of the SAJBD in combating antisemitism was that of radio broadcasting. In this, it has relied upon the terms of the Broadcasting Code of Conduct, which expressly prohibits the broadcasting of hate speech ("advocacy of hatred," "likely to prejudice relations between sections of the South African population," "incitement to cause harm"). Over the past decade, the SAJBD has lodged a number of complaints, and on occasion taken legal action, against antisemitic broadcasting.

Significant progress was made, for example, in the SAJBD's long-running battle with Radio 786, a Cape Town-based Muslim community radio station under the auspices of the Islamic Unity Convention (IUC). The SAJBD's complaint dates back to 8 May 1998, when Radio 786 aired a program featuring many instances of antisemitic conspiracy theorizing and Holocaust denial. This was followed by an extended series of court cases and appeals as the IUC pursued every possible legal avenue and stalling tactic in an effort to avoid the issue going to a formal hearing.

In March 2006, an eleventh hour appeal to the Johannesburg High Court followed by last-ditch procedural arguments before the Broadcasting Monitoring and Complaints Committee (BMCC) came to nothing for the IUC when it was ruled that a hearing into the SAJBD's complaint should go ahead as scheduled. On 12 May, the BMCC issued its ruling upholding the SAJBD's complaint. However, the IUC has since lodged two further court applications, the first challenging the constitutionality of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa Code of Conduct and the second demanding that the BMCC decision itself be taken on review. Both cases were to be heard in 2007.

A commission report into bias at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) revealed that a number of political analysts had been blacklisted by Snuki Zikalala, chief executive for news and current affairs. The commission found eight instances in which Zikalala restricted the use of commentators or analysts. Included in the blacklist was Paula Slier, a Jewish journalist. Zikalala, as cited in the report, justified his ban on the use of news items produced by Slier by saying: "From the movement where I come from we support PLO. But she supported what's happening in Israel. And then I said to them, Paula Slier, we cannot use her on the Middle East issue because we know where she stands." Zikalala's views contradict the official policy of the SABC, which is to be non-partisan in its news reporting.

In the 2005 affair of antisemitic graffiti daubed by a resident of White River on his wall in full view of his Jewish neighbor (see ASW 2005), the latter, through the Human Rights Commission, took the case to the Equity Court; as a result, the first trial on an antisemitic issue in post-apartheid South Africa, was heard in March. The ruling went in favor of the complainant and the guilty party was fined.

During 2006, both the SAJBD and SA Zionist Federation issued statements criticizing the government for displaying bias against Israel (i.e., blaming Israel almost exclusively for adverse developments in the Middle East), and responded to antisemitic articles in the national press. For instance, in an article entitled "Israel's Recent Round of Aggression Has Lifted Its Long-Worn Shroud of Victimhood," in the Cape Argus (31 Aug.), Mohau Pheko and Mariama Williams stated, inter alia: "If there is anything good to come out of the recent carnage in Lebanon, it is one simple fact - the Jewish people and the state of Israel have been shown to be who they really are - not special, not chosen by God, not especially victimised, not the most persecuted people on earth.human beings who have the capacity and intention to carry out brutalities and barbarities in all forms."