SOUTH AFRICA 2008/9      

 

Mounting instances of anti-Jewish rhetoric, including open threats against the Jewish community and its leaders, on Muslim community radio stations were a source of great concern to the Jewish community. Nevertheless, antisemitism levels in South Africa remained virtually unchanged from the previous year, with the sixty incidents recorded representing only a marginal rise. Most antisemitic activity took the form of verbal abuse and derogatory comments, with acts of outright violence being extremely rare. 

 

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

The Jewish population is estimated at 70,000 out of a total population of 46 million. The main Jewish centers are Johannesburg (48,000) and Cape Town (16,000), while smaller ones are Durban (2,500) and Pretoria (1,500). Communities of between one and five hundred in Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein, East London and along the Southern Cape coastal belt make up the balance. 

South African Jewry boasts 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 SA 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) ensures security at Jewish communal functions and at Jewish installations, and has expanded its operations into the much-needed area of crime prevention, where it works closely with the police and private security companies.  The SAJBD and the CSO cooperate in monitoring antisemitism and taking appropriate action, such as formally laying criminal charges, as well as official complaints with relevant institutions (such as the SA Human Rights Commission). 

Jews remain prominently represented at most levels of civil society, including local government, the civil service and the judiciary. However, unlike during the Apartheid era and in the decade immediately following the transition to democracy, there has been comparatively little Jewish representation in Parliament and at the provincial government level. 

 

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 Democratic Alliance (DA), which holds fifty seats, is the Official Opposition.

The ANC was riven by internal dissent during 2008, culminating in the emergence of a significant breakaway group that subsequently formed a rival party, the Congress of the People. On September 22, Thabo Mbeki, the country’s president since 1999, was forced to resign after losing the support of the ANC National Executive. He was replaced by Kgalema Motlanthe.

 

Extremist Groups

Antisemitic rhetoric and propaganda in South Africa today emanates mainly from radical groupings within the country’s 800,000-strong Muslim community. Far right white organizations pose almost no threat to the Jewish community since they are largely inactive.

The Muslim Judicial Council (MJC), based in Cape Town, openly backs extremist organizations such as Hamas and Hizballah and brands the Fatah of Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas collaborators. Its leaders have made antisemitic/anti-Zionist statements on a number of occasions (see, for example, ASW 2005). The MJC continued to make allegations in the Muslim media and at public gatherings about supposed Israeli/Jewish plots to destroy Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque.  The radical Israeli Muslim cleric Shaykh Ra`id Salah, a leading exponent of this allegation, was brought to South Africa by the MJC for a two-week speaking visit early in the year.

By far the most consistent source of antisemitic propaganda was Channel Islam International (CII), a 24 hour digital radio station broadcast from Lenasia, Johannesburg, to over 55 countries (see also below). As in the past, Radio 786, a Muslim community radio station under the auspices of the Islamic Unity Convention, also provided a platform for members of the public to espouse antisemitic rhetoric without being challenged. On December 29, for example, one listener asked,  “Why is the Jewish community of South Africa so quiet? They send all our money, our hard sweat money out of South Africa to Israel, to arm Israel. Beware the Zionists.”

Qibla, founded in Cape Town in 1979 in the wake of the Iranian Revolution, remains active in organizing anti-Israel rallies and in campaigning for South Africa to cut all 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, disseminating antisemitic propaganda, including Holocaust denial, anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and offensive cartoons, on its website.

While it eschews overt antisemitism, the Palestinian Solidarity Committee (PSC) is a strident anti-Israel voice that calls for the dissolution of the State of Israel. The PSC was active on the University of the Witwatersrand campus, inter alia, in October when it mounted provocative demonstrations of Palestinians being “tortured” by Israel. The powerful Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) has strongly endorsed the PSC agenda on numerous occasions, including a call to South Africa to sever all diplomatic and economic relations with Israel.  

 

ANTISEMITIC ACTIVITIES

Of the sixty incidents recorded in 2008, more than half took the form of verbal abuse. These were often random, such as insults directed from passing vehicles at Jews walking to and from the synagogue. Others arose in the course of disputes between Jewish and non-Jewish parties, such as between residents of the same housing complex. Other forms of antisemitism included graffiti (e.g., “Jews must die” and “The Holocaust is exaggerated by 5 million,” daubed on the walls at Wits University campus), anonymous hate mail, and the dissemination of offensive literature. Only rarely did antisemitic abuse involve any physical violence.   

The relatively low rate of anti-Jewish incidents in the country does not necessarily indicate favorable or neutral opinions of Jews. In September, the highly regarded Pew Global Attitudes Project released a report on attitudes toward Jews and Muslims around the world (see http://pewglobal.org/). A relevant survey question in this regard was, “Please tell me if you have a very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable opinion of Jews.” In South Africa, 46 percent of respondents (based on a cross-racial sample of 1001) regarded Jews in a “very unfavorable” or “somewhat unfavorable” light, and only 26 percent of responses fell into the ‘favorable’ category. In fact, South Africa had one of the highest levels of negative sentiment toward Jews of all the non-Muslim countries included in the survey. (Similarly, Mexico’s largely negative attitude towards Jews is contradicted by antisemitism rates which, if anything, are even lower than South Africa’s). 

On January 14, 2009, in the midst of Israel’s Cast Lead Operation in Gaza, Deputy Foreign Minister Fatima Hajaig spoke at a pro-Palestinian rally in Lenasia, Johannesburg, where she accused the United States and most western countries of being in the thrall of Jewish money power. The SAJBD lodged a complaint of hate speech with the South African Human Rights Commission.

Earlier, on December 29, at the conclusion of an acrimonious meeting with newly appointed Israel Ambassador to South Africa Dov Segev-Steinberg, Hajaig provoked an official complaint by Israel to the South African embassy in Tel Aviv for her clear intimation that a senior member of the local Israeli embassy staff was no more than a token black whose appointment was due only to his race.

The main concern of the SAJBD during 2008 was the persistent broadcasting of overt antisemitism by the above-mentioned CII. Depictions of Jews as inherently evil and as treacherous plotters against the human race responsible for all the world’s most serious problems featured continuously, with explicit threats to attack Jews beginning to surface toward the end of the year. On at least a weekly basis, from August through November, the station broadcast programs hosted by Daryl Bradford Smith, an arch-antisemitic conspiracy theorist originally from the US and today based in Paris, from where the programs were broadcast live. A sample of Smith’s inflammatory rhetoric, broadcast on October 21, goes: “Islam is not behind crimes of terrorism except for the people from the Arab community or from the Persian community that they can purchase − and they do − they purchase their stooges, their criminals − they get them to do terrible things, but the people ordering these attacks are not from the family of Islam, or they are not Muslims.  They are Jews, ladies and gentlemen, and they are Zionists.”

One of the talk show hosts on CII who consistently propagated antisemitic theories, while endorsing those made by callers-in to his show, was Jon Qwelane (see also, for example, ASW 1999/2000). In June, he claimed that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was an authentic document, saying: “The Zionists was so embarrassed when [the Protocols] came to light, they denied, they tried this, they tried that. Then you had Zionist controlled-courts in Switzerland and somewhere else declaring the book a fake. And outlawing it. But Henry Ford would take none of that nonsense [sic].” Qwelane later reiterated this belief at length, while launching a furious tirade at the SAJBD for challenging him on the issue.

Qwelane’s hostility took a more dangerous turn during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, when he explicitly supported targeting Jews anywhere in the world in retaliation for what Israel was doing. On January 6, 2009, he said: “I do agree totally with the theory that what the Jews are doing to the Palestinians right now renders Jews everywhere wherever they may be to be legitimate targets...”

The SAJBD was investigating various options through which this matter might best be addressed.

 

RESPONSES TO RACISM AND ANTISEMITISM

The SAJBD and CSO, usually working in tandem, have a policy of following up every incident reported to them, no matter how minor, and taking appropriate action whenever possible. Through these efforts, a number of individuals guilty of anti-Jewish abuse were punished through the laying of crimen injuria charges followed by court action, with the culprits being fined and ordered to apologize.

One such incident in February 2008 involved a Jewish family in Three Anchor Bay, Cape Town, and their Shabbat guests, who were subjected to lengthy antisemitic abuse by a neighboring couple, including taunts such as “You f****g Jews, you f****g kikes, you Jews should all go to the gas chambers and burn, burn.” The SAJBD Cape Council took the matter to the Human Rights Commission, and later successfully represented the family in the case before the Equality Court. The incident and court proceedings received prominent coverage in the local media.

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. They also met with the university administration to discuss and address the appearance of antisemitic graffiti on campus.

At the behest of the SAJBD, a book store in Sandton removed antisemitic literature, including The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, from its shelves. In addition, the SAJBD intervened on several occasions to prevent the dissemination of antisemitic and anti-Israel material by employees making unauthorized use of company e-mail facilities. Meetings were also held with the staff of certain schools where antisemitic manifestations were reported to ensure that appropriate action was taken.