(Reviewer: David Saks, Vol 78, #2, Winter 2023)
When Milton Shain’s book The Roots of Antisemitism in South Africa appeared in 1994, it was hailed as the first scholarly examination of the origins, nature and reasons for anti-Jewish prejudice in South Africa from the earliest times of Jewish settlement until shortly before World War II. In this ground-breaking study Shain, at the time a lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Cape Town, demonstrated how antisemitism did not only emerge as a significant factor in South African society in the early 1930s but was an important element long before that.
Since his retirement in 2014 (having prior to then gone on to serve for two decades as director of UCT’s Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies & Research), Shain has produced two further books on antisemitism in South Africa, picking up the story in 1930 and taking it through to the present day. The first, A Perfect Storm: Antisemitism in South Africa, 1930-1948 (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2015) chronicled how the ‘Jewish Question’ shifted from the political margins of South African public life to its centre, with Jewish immigration and the place of Jews in the economy becoming serious topics of debate in Parliament as well as during national elections. A review of that book appeared in the Pesach 2016 issue of Jewish Affairs (Milton Shain’s A Perfect Storm – Historical and Contemporary Angles – Jewish Affairs). The concluding volume of the trilogy, Fascists, Fabricators and Fantasists. Antisemitism in South Africa from 1948 to the Present, appeared early in 2023. Taking as its starting point the 1948 general elections, when the mainly Afrikaner-supported National Party came into office and immediately set about implementing its policy of Apartheid, it “traces and unpacks hostile attitudes towards Jews and irrational fantasies that accompany them in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa”.
Like its two critically acclaimed predecessors, Fabricators and Fantasists is an impressive combination of meticulous research and judicious analysis presented throughout with the author’s trademark elegance and clarity. It expertly interweaves and elucidates its main subject against the backdrop of events taking place in the broader context of post-war South Africa, both during the Apartheid era and in the decades following the country’s transition to democracy in the closing years of the century. While focused on the experiences of a relatively small sector of the population, the themes it addresses relating to race, identity, the nature, causes and persistence of prejudice and the dynamics of intergroup relations in a multicultural society have resonance well beyond the Jewish experience.
The book consists of four long chapters, preceded by a preface and introduction and followed by a concluding section entitled “Afterthoughts”. As befits a scholarly study of this nature the Notes, amounting to fifty pages, comprises the longest single section. The four chapters are entitled ‘Subversive Outsiders: 1940s to 1960s’, ‘Neo-Nazis, Fantasists and Conspiracists: 1940s to 1960s’, ‘The resurgence of Exclusivism and Neo-Nazism: 1970s to 1980s’ and ‘Into the ‘New’ South Africa: 1990 to the present’.
From the outset, Shain makes an important distinction between ‘private’ or ‘ideational’ and ‘public’ or ‘programmatic’ antisemitism, that is, of anti-Jewish prejudice that is largely confined to the realm of private opinion and social discourse as opposed to the public realm of public policy and politics. For the most part, antisemitism in South Africa has taken the first form, the most noteworthy departure from this being the period from the 1930s up until the ascension to office of the National Party in 1948 when “the Jewish question” constantly surfaced as a significant political and public policy issue. Why this period saw what Shain characterises as “the utilization of anti-Jewish canards for political agendas” were the prevailing sociocultural patterns and political issues of the time, summed up by Shain as being “Economic, social and political instability, coupled with an ascendant völkisch Afrikaner nationalism, the likelihood of a Jewish refugee influx from Germany, and an upwardly mobile Jewish community”. After 1948 a distinct shift took place whereby anti-Jewish fantasies and tropes, while they survived and “mutated in fascinating and complex ways”, never threatened to once more transform private/ideational antisemitism into public/programmatic action.
While the majority of Fascists, Fabricators and Fantasists deals with events post-1948, the author begins by reviewing what took place in the decade leading up to that date, as well as the ideological trends within the milieu of resurgent Afrikaner nationalism that impacted on attitudes towards the local Jewish community and Jews in general. As Shain points out, even prior to the decisive 1948 election, which marked the beginning of Nationalist rule that would last unbroken right up until the country’s transition to multiracial democracy 46 years later, the ”Jewish question” had ceased to be a major party-political issue. Once in office, the National Party took further steps to distance itself from the overt antisemitism that had characterised its previous policies in order to reassure Jews that they had nothing to fear from the new administration. There were understandable reasons for this. The NP was intent on implementing its policy of Apartheid (“separate development” as it would later be called), whose aim was to perpetuate and entrench white minority rule and, in the parlance of the time, ensure that South Africa remained “a white man’s country”. For that to succeed, it was vital not to alienate particular sectors of the white population, which included the Jewish community. There were thus “more important wedge issues and hence little need…to mobilise support around the potentially divisive ‘Jewish question’”. Moreover, the Holocaust and establishment of the State of Israel had “ended the prospect of large-scale Jewish immigration” (pp4-5). Another crucial factor in the decline of antisemitism as a political factor was the growing upward mobility of Afrikaners, who previously had constituted a disproportionate part of the country’s so-called “Poor White” population. The perceived economic threat that Jews posed to Afrikaner socio-economic development accordingly lessened over time, albeit never disappearing completely.
Apartheid was both an ideology and a far-reaching political and social programme that was whole-heartedly adopted by most white Afrikaners as the policy that would ensure their survival as a distinct national group able to determine its own destiny within its own territory. With the progressive decline after 1948 of the United Party opposition in Parliament, increasing numbers of English-speaking whites began switching their political allegiances. For most whites, indeed, the question was not about whether white power and privilege in South Africa should be perpetuated but how best this might be done. In that regard, only the National Party appeared to have a coherent vision.
With so much invested in Apartheid as being the solution to guaranteeing white survival, it was inevitable that those who opposed it as being not only unworkable but intrinsically unjust came to be widely charged with disloyalty to South Africa and even of being enemies of the white races in general. Adding another potent element to the mix were mounting fears over the threat posed by international Communism, which through the Soviet Union and other countries was indeed achieving considerable penetration throughout the African continent. As Shain observes, “One cannot underestimate the fear of subversive communists and liberals, allegedly acting at the behest of Moscow” (p28). That the ideology of Communism, in addition to being fundamentally opposed to any form of ethno-nationalism was explicitly anti-religious further intensified the loathing felt towards it by conservative white Christians, and particularly by Afrikaners, who’s deeply held Christian beliefs were a fundamental part of their identity.
Why all of this was specifically of concern to the Jewish community was because so many of its members were involved in anti-apartheid activities of various kinds. Long before 1948, Jews had constituted a strikingly high proportion of whites actively opposing the country’s racially discriminatory policies, and that proved even more to be the case after that date. From doctrinaire Communists on the far left of the spectrum to traditional liberals working within the official structures, Jews were a very visible and highly influential presence in the anti-apartheid movement. This could hardly have gone unnoticed by the ruling white regime and its supporters, among them academics, educators, members of the clergy, journalists, the security establishment and other influential policy and opinion makers. Much of Shain’s book is devoted to examining how in the post-war era, it emerged as perhaps the most persistent source of anti-Jewish rhetoric, inter alia regularly bringing to the fore stereotypical tropes about Jews being a disloyal fifth column plotting to undermine the establishment for their own dishonorable ends.
Once in office, the National Party nevertheless steered clear of the “vulgar Jew-baiting” its representatives had frequently engaged in prior to 1948 (such as that Jews were unassimilable and economically exploited whites). Occasional Judeopathic outbursts on the part of Nationalist politicians post-1948 were in the main predicated on the prominence of Jews on the liberal-left involved in opposing the apartheid system. Shain notes how even a mainstream liberal Jew like Helen Suzman was targeted as a subversive threat and subjected to regular antisemitic slurs from across the benches” (33).
Items in the pro-Nationalist, mainly Afrikaans press are useful in reflecting these sentiments (as do right-wing websites, blogs and social media platforms in our own day). They include editorials, columns and readers’ letters, and Shain quotes from a number of them. For example, Neels Natte, a prominent columnist for The Transvaler, once drew attention to the high proportion of “foreign names in the liberalistic left wing” of the United Party in the Transvaal and proceeded to list the names of 13 Jewish political figures. In response, a correspondent wrote, “We as Afrikaners would very much like to learn why the Jews work so conspicuously in every sphere against the Government’s Apartheid policy, because their names appear most prominently as advocates for all agitation movements…what do they aim at with their liberalistic policy of mingling between white and non-white?” The letter concluded with the veiled warning, “We wish to bring to our Jewish friends’ attention that these actions will not be observed without consequences by South Africans as a whole”. Such sentiments were typical of the anti-Jewish backlash that the involvement of Jews in anti-apartheid activities generated, even within the decidedly unradical United Party opposition.
As the representative voice of the Jewish community, the SA Jewish Board of Deputies regularly came under pressure to account for the high number of Jews involved in far-leftist activities, and even on occasion to officially distance themselves from them. Most notable was during the countrywide near panic following the July 1963 raid on the secret headquarters of Umkhonto we Sizwe in Rivonia, when all the whites among those arrested were Jews. The board was formally approached by a representative of Dagbreek en Sondagnuus who asked what the official Jewish standpoint was about the actions of people like [Arthur] Goldreich and [Harold] Wolpe and how was it that such a high percentage of white persons detained under the 90 day clause of the General Law Amendment Act were Jews. To that the Board reiterated its official position that “the actions of individuals of any section are their own responsibility, and no section of the community can or should be asked to accept responsibility. If individuals transgress the law they expose themselves to the penalty of the law”. As long serving SAJBD secretary general Gus Saron warned, such a reply would not pacify those concerned about Jewish loyalty. Shain quotes Saron as telling the executive of the Board that many people of influence, especially Afrikaners, “were expecting the Jewish community to dissociate itself in some official manner from the alleged subversive activities of certain individual Jews” (p36).
Ironically, the SAJBD would also in time be condemned by liberal and left-leaning Jews for responding in so guarded and neutral a manner instead of taking an explicit stance against injustice. Post-apartheid, the Board has consistently been accused by right-wing whites of complicity in overthrowing apartheid while just as regularly portrayed by anti-Zionist agitators as having supported it.
In the second half of the century, radical antisemitism of the Neo-Nazi, ultra-rightwing variety was in the main confined to a small, if persistent fringe group within the white population. Comments Shain, “Numbers may have been small and organizational activity minimal, but some individuals remained determined believers, finding common cause with a postwar international web of fascists and neo-Nazis, and doing their best to keep alive the flame of antisemitic thought” (p52). The activities and impact of some of the main offenders are examined, including Ray Rudman (who “patently lived in a fantasy world people by sinister and cunning Jews”), SED Brown (editor of the long-running monthly publication The South African Observer, in which concerns about ‘the Jewish question’ and ‘political Zionism’ were a constant theme) and Johan Schoeman (who “gave vent to his own fantasies in numerous publications, while at the same time peppering newspapers with letters, distributing pamphlets and brochures, and sending telegrams and cablegrams to government ministers and international leaders warning them, inter alia, earlier, of the evils of the United Nations and Zionism, and after the war, disputing the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust” – p59). There was also the crusading anti-communist journalist Ivor Benson of whom Shain (p367) comments, “For him, the news was managed and orchestrated by Jews with the help of bottomless funds that enabled manipulation and pernicious brainwashing”).
Shain concludes that the efforts of Rudman, Schoeman, Brown, Benson and others of their ilk ultimately had limited resonance, and that to most observers they would have come across as “charlatons and crackpots”. That being said, they did “manage to keep alive a world of anti- Jewish conspiracy that was nourished by the inflow of anti-Jewish material from abroad” (p63). Particularly from the mid-1960s, Holocaust denialism emerged as “the most commonplace fantasy on the radical white right”.
From the late 1970s until the eventual demise of white minority rule in 1994 a plethora of far-right splinter groups emerged as it became clear that the National Party was gradually abandoning its Grand Apartheid strategy. The most active and the one that attracted the most attention was the Afrikanerweerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement, or AWB), instantly recognisable by its notorious three-legged swastika emblem and rendered consistently newsworthy by the flamboyant antics of its “charismatic and demagogic” leader Eugene Terreblanche (p105). Predictably, its worldview was thoroughly informed by antisemitic conspiracist fantasies predicated on the claimed machinations of “International-Zionist-Leftist-communist money powers” (p108). It could be that Terreblanche himself was not so fanatical an antisemite as his in-your-face rhetoric might suggest. In interviews, including with Jewish spokespeople, he would rather stress that the reason why Jews would be excluded from participating in government in the future white volkstaat he envisaged was because they were not Christians. As he told the journalist Patrick Lourence, “I am a Christian, and Christian convictions are the reason for the volk” (p110). On public platforms, Terreblanche nevertheless routinely engaged in crude antisemitic rhetoric, presumably because this was what his support base wanted to hear. It is tempting to draw comparisons with our own day’s Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema, like Terreblanche a charismatic demagogue whose flamboyant anti-white pronouncements may for his own part be more a matter of branding and strategy than out-and-out conviction.
In the book’s final chapter (‘Into the ‘New’ South Africa: 1990 to the present’) Shain examines the new forms of antisemitism that emerged in South Africa following the transition to democracy. Prior to this, the focus of the book had been confined to the white population, the reason being that “Jews had never been a specific political concern for the black majority, which included black Africans, Indians and Coloureds. Their struggle was against white domination and oppression. Colour was the cardinal divide” (p120). Once “the veil of apartheid was lifted”, stereotypical antisemitic attitudes within the non-white population began to surface publicly, albeit relatively infrequently. Industrial action sometimes resulted in rhetoric on the theme of Jews as capitalist exploiters of the workers (occasionally even in cases where the management and ownership of the company concerned was devoid of Jews). Shain makes it clear, however, that while entrenched anti-Jewish stereotypes have persisted in certain quarters, these have not had great traction, and in all by no means suggest that South Africa in the democratic era has been “awash with antisemitism”. As he points out, the 1996 Constitution “celebrates cultural and religious diversity”, and Jew-hatred like all forms of prejudice is thus frowned upon. South Africa in fact experiences relatively few anti-Jewish incidents, despite the prevalence of anti-Jewish attitudes that a range of credible studies (including by the Anti-Defamation League) have demonstrated. In addition to standard anti-capitalist groupthink in which Jews invariably loom large, religious-based prejudice based on traditional anti-Judaic New Testament teachings cannot be discounted as a factor in negative attitudes towards Jews in South Africa.
Referring back to the distinction he made earlier on between ‘ideational’ and ‘programmatic’ antisemitism, Shain is careful to stress that anti-Jewish ideas or attitudes in post-apartheid South Africa “have never threatened to turn into party-political action or policy” (p131). The situation is different, however, when it comes to “the Zionist question”. While making the essential point that “antagonism towards Israel cannot axiomatically be equated with antisemitism”, Shain nevertheless notes how anti-Zionist discourse “often goes beyond the bounds of normal political rhetoric and frequently betrays vulgar Jew hatred” (pp133-4). It has long been apparent how an obsessive anti-Zionism on the left fuelled by a post-colonial anti-Zionist discourse has come to share and echo the conspiratorial fantasies of the radical right. As Shain puts it, “some anti-Zionists today have constructed a fantasy world with the malevolent and manipulative Jew at its centre” (p161). By way of example, he quotes Palestine Solidarity Committee spokesman Martin Jansen, who in 2014 stated that “the powerful tentacles of Zionist power and influences reach into the commanding heights of our economy and the ANC government through business arrangements and patronage”.
Israel has indeed become “the locus of hate” (p158), driven primarily although not exclusively by Muslims. In considering the emergence from the 1980s onwards of radical Islamic movements and ideologies as a significant factor in South Africa, Shain notes how the Israeli-Arab conflict, which essentially is a political conflict about territory, “has for many Muslims become a cosmological and Manichaean struggle wrapped in a giant conspiracy” (p148). On investigation, this obviously draws heavily on and echoes the fantasies and fabrications of the likes of Ray Rudman, SED Brown, Ivor Benson and the AWB, not to mention those of the current generation of radical right white supremacists. The latter continue post-apartheid to be a persistent source of antisemitic propaganda, and indeed with the emergence of electronic platforms have been accorded vehicles for easily disseminating their theories that Rudman et al would never have dreamed of.
In the ‘Afterthoughts’ section (p161), Shain reflects on how antisemitism in South Africa was adopted by specific political and ideological constituencies for their own purposes yet in essence was underpinned throughout by the same core themes:
For each cast of haters, the Jew has been identified as a source of evil in South Africa: at the turn of the century, it was for fomenting war, corroding business ethics, and corrupting society; in the 1930s and early 1940s, for pulling the political and economic strings of society; and in recent decades (in the form of anti-Zionism), for malevolently orchestrating global politics and financial affairs in a quest for world domination.
In this sense the radical right and the contemporary anti-Zionist left share much with the left-liberal JA Hobson …. Writing at the end of the nineteenth century and informed by the so-called logic of capitalism and its ties to imperialism, Hobson saw Jews as orchestrating the Anglo-Boer War for financial gain. Like the Hobsonians on the left and the radicals on the right, some anti-Zionists today have constructed a fantasy world with the malevolent and manipulative Jew at its centre.
Looking to the future, Shain believes it is highly unlikely that hostile ideas towards Jews will mutate into public policy. That being said, he nevertheless warns that things can easily change and that consequently South African Jewry cannot afford to become complacent. To emphasize this, his book begins and concludes with the following quote from the eminent historian Hugh Trevor-Roper (The Phenomenon of Fascism, 1981): “History teaches us that even the most tenuous phantoms can come to life if objective circumstances change. The fantasies of one generation can provide the mental furniture, even the lifeblood, of another”.
Shain, Milton, Fabricators and Fantasists. Antisemitism in South Africa from 1948 to the Present, Jacana Media, 2023. For more information about the book, see https://jacana.co.za/product/fascists-fabricators-and-fantasists-anti-semitism-in-south-africa-from-1948-till-now/
David Saks is Associate Director of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies and Editor of Jewish Affairs.
