SOUTH AFRICA 2007

 

Although constituting a relatively low-level threat to the South African Jewish community, antisemitism emanates mainly from radical groups within the country’s 800,000-strong Muslim community. Fifty-nine incidents were recorded during 2007, representing a 33 percent drop from the previous year. Most antisemitic activity took the form of verbal abuse and derogatory comments.

 

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

The Jewish population is estimated at 75,000-80,000 out of a total population of 46 million, with more than 90 percent being located in the two urban centers of Johannesburg (50,000) and Cape Town (18,000). Other centers of note include Durban (2,700) and Pretoria (1,500), while smaller concentrations are found in Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein, East London and along the Southern Cape coastal belt.

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 is affiliated with one or another religious congregation (85 percent of which are Orthodox).

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 senior officials at all levels of government. The Community Security Organization (CSO) ensures security at Jewish communal functions and at Jewish installations. It has expanded its operations into the much-needed area of crime prevention in recent years, working closely with the police in monitoring and patrolling areas of Johannesburg where Jews are concentrated. The SAJBD and the CSO cooperate in monitoring antisemitism and taking appropriate action wherever possible, including laying charges with the police and following them up.

Jews remain prominently represented at all levels of civil society including in parliament, local government, the civil service and the 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 currently holds 290 (72.5% percent) of the 400 seats in the House of Assembly. The Democratic Alliance (DA), which holds 47 seats, is the Official Opposition. Its leader, until the end of 2006, was Tony Leon, who is Jewish.

 

Extremist Groups

Far right white organizations are virtually dormant in South Africa, and no longer pose a realistic threat to the Jewish community. Antisemitism in South Africa today is largely confined to radical groupings within the country’s 800,000-strong Muslim community. From its base 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. Of particular concern is the MJC’s persistent agitation in the Muslim media and at public gatherings against alleged Israeli/Jewish plots to destroy Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque. On Human Rights Day (21 March – a South African public holiday) the MJC hosted a program calling for the “liberation” of al-Aqsa Mosque at the College of Cape Town. The program was reportedly attended by hundreds of people from the Cape Town Muslim community, who were asked to rise and take an oath proclaiming their readiness to protect Jerusalem.

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). Closely aligned with the IUC is Qibla, whose founding in 1979 was inspired by the Iranian Revolution. While claiming that Qibla is not a terrorist organization, in her article “PAGAD: A Case Study of Radical Islam in South Africa” (Terrorism Monitor, vol. 3, no. 17, Sept. 2005), Anneli Botha, a senior researcher on terrorism at the Institute for Security Studies in Cape Town, nevertheless claims that it is manipulated from a safe distance by the Iranian intelligence services, which use it “not only to propagate the world view of the Islamic Republic, but also as a cover to conduct espionage in RSA [sic].” In May, Qibla presented a memorandum to the Department of Foreign Affairs calling on the government to cut diplomatic ties with Israel.

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 and propagates antisemitic material, including Holocaust denial, anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and antisemitic cartoons, on its website.

While it eschews overt antisemitism, the Palestinian Solidarity Committee (PSC) calls for the dissolution of the State of Israel. The PSC was active, together with the MJC, the Media Review Network and several other organizations in urging a countrywide boycott of Israeli products over the period marking the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War and has a strong presence on Johannesburg’s Wits University campus.

At a press briefing on 13 March, the coordinator of the South African National Intelligence Coordinating Committee, Barry Gilder, explicitly stated that South African intelligence agencies were watching individuals and organizations in South Africa with a possible involvement in international terrorism. Gilder stated that these included foreigners from Pakistan, Somalia, Bangladesh and Jordan, among others.

 

ANTISEMITIC ACTIVITIES

A total of 59 antisemitic incidents was recorded in South Africa by the SA Jewish Board of Deputies and the Community Security Organisation. This was the second highest number of incidents logged since detailed record keeping began in the early 1990s, but it was significantly lower than the all-time high of 82 noted the previous year. A relatively quiet year on the Middle East front was probably the main reason for the decline.

More than half of the incidents took the form of random verbal abuse, frequently directed from passing vehicles at Jews walking to and from synagogue on the Sabbath. The insults were sometimes accompanied by threats of physical violence. One community member had a firearm pointed at him in the course of a “road rage” incident, in which antisemitic remarks were also made, while a Jewish family was subjected to gross antisemitic insults by suspects in the course of an armed robbery.

Among the cases of telephone harassment, two kosher butcheries in Johannesburg were threatened by a caller with a boycott as part of the nation-wide boycott of Israel that had just been launched (see above). Generally, however, anti-Israel activity was largely a fringe phenomenon and had a minimal impact on the Jewish community.

Other forms of antisemitism included graffiti, hate mail, derogatory comments made in the public realm and the dissemination of offensive literature. An example of graffiti was the daubing (in lipstick) of the words “Murderers” and “Pigs” in the (Jewish) King David Victory Park School visitors’ book at a schools exhibition in Sandton City. There were two reported cases of antisemitic abuse being exacerbated by acts of physical violence, one occurring during an altercation between a Jewish youth and several non-Jews at a shopping centre and the other when a member of the Bnei Akiva youth movement was shot with a paint ball.

On rare occasions, attacks on Jews surfaced in the public realm. Speaking at the launch of the second annual Islamic Finance Business Awards for 2007, prominent Muslim business leader Solly Noor called on Muslims to follow the Jewish example and adopt their own world domination program along the lines of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He further urged Muslims to wrest control of South Africa from alleged Jewish clutches by adopting the same methods of infiltrating the media and government supposedly used by the Jews.

Badih Chaaban, an African Muslim Party counselor in Cape Town city council, was accused of making racist remarks about blacks, colored and Jews in the course of a council investigation. He is alleged to have said, “There is something about Jews that everyone wants to f**k them,” that it was time for the Jews “to be “f**ked again” and that the final solution would be when “five or six million Jews are bombed in one day.” It was also revealed that Chaaban had allegedly been recorded offering business opportunities, money and well-paying positions in the city to councilors so that they would cross the floor and join a new party, the National People’s Party, purportedly being formed. Chabaan was removed from office and now faces various criminal and civil charges.

An ongoing problem is the desecration of Jewish cemeteries outside the main urban centers. Ten such cemeteries were reported vandalized during 2007, with the damage rendered being accompanied by satanic graffiti in the cases of Nigel and Kimberley. In the absence of overtly anti-Jewish motifs, however, it was not possible to determine beyond doubt whether the attacks were antisemitically motivated or purely criminal in nature.

 

RESPONSES TO RACISM AND ANTISEMITISM

Yet another chapter was written in the nine-year battle between the SAJBD and Radio 786 on December 7, when the Constitutional Court dismissed on all counts an application by the Islamic Unity Convention to strike down certain provisions of the Independent Communications Authority of SA legislation relating to complaints and adjudication. The application was the latest attempt by the IUC to prevent the implementation of sanctions imposed by the Broadcasting Monitoring and Complaints Committee (BMCC) of ICASA against its radio station, Radio 786. The SAJBD’s complaint dates back to May 8, 1998, when Radio 786 broadcast an interview with Islamic scholar Yakub Zaki who denied that the Holocaust had taken place and further blamed Jews for being behind some of the worst disasters in modern history (see ASW 1997−2006).

In 2006, the SAJBD lodged a complaint against the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) after it was revealed that its chief executive for news and current affairs, Snuki Zikalala, had banned Paula Slier, a Jewish journalist, from reporting on the Middle East as she was not considered to be sufficiently pro-Palestinian. After meeting with Zikalala, the SAJBD decided to withdraw its complaint in return for which the SABC would engage an independent media monitoring organization to evaluate and report on its Middle East coverage for one year so that any problems of bias against Israel could be properly evaluated and addressed.

The SA Union of Jewish Students, supported by the SAJBD, launched several well-supported counter campaigns on Wits University campus in response to the activities of the Palestinian Solidarity Committee.

At the behest of the SAJBD, a book store in Eastgate removed antisemitic literature, including Henry Ford’s notorious The International Jew, from its shelves.