(Author: Leon Levy, Vol. 63, #3, Chanukah 2008)
- Feature image: Leon Levy receiving the Rabbi Cyril & Ann Harris Human Rights Award, SA Jewish Board of Deputies national conference, 22 November 2015. From left: President Jacob Zuma, Leon Levy, Ann Harris, Mary Kluk, Zev Krengel.
Whether being Jewish was a help or hindrance in the liberation and labor movements during the apartheid era is a very individual matter. People have different perceptions and sensitivities, and therefore it is unwise to speak in the name of all Jewish activists in the struggle for liberation.
I believe that being Jewish was a great help to the liberation movements, and the positions and confidence that was placed in Jewish activists bears testimony to this. Many Jewish activists were elected to the highest positions in the different liberation organizations, and if their Jewishness was an issue that their opponents capitalized on, it in no way hindered their contribution.
What I have come to believe is that, notwithstanding acknowledgement of all other peoples’ passion and efforts in actively participating in the liberation and trade union movements, Jewish people brought something very special to the struggle against apartheid. Their own or family backgrounds were packed with experience in other struggles and they passed these experiences on, either personally or to their offspring. Each has a story of his or her own to tell; I will tell you mine, because it is not all that different from those of many other fellow Jewish activists.
In truth, I am still exploring what were the influences and inspirations that persuaded me to embark upon a course of confrontation with established South African racial ethics, discriminatory practices and unjust legislation. But there are very many, varied and diverse, reasons I can share. Searching for what influenced and inspired me is in essence a matter of identity. Who am I, what am I and why? Why do I need to question myself so rigorously – and why can’t I leave it for others, if they are interested, to think about the likes of me and come to their own conclusions?
A lot of the answers to these questions concern values which for me, constitute a road map and a sense of right and wrong when it comes to living one’s life and respecting others. Such values matter and are worth discussing, but certainly not sermonizing about. These days, a Jewish left wing activist who is concerned and vocal about right and wrong and universal human rights, faces intolerant and thoughtless accusations of being a self-hating Jew. There are resonances here of the intolerance of previous practices and regimes, here and elsewhere in the world, which are designed to intimidate, suppress and stultify progressive intellectual thought.
My own background comprises many strands. The problems of family, economic circumstances, the rise of Afrikaner nationalism and the world at war were real concerns to my generation. I was growing up in a country in which there was overt and active support for fascism, and was exposed to talk about the Grey Shirts and Ossewebrandwag which replicated the frightening activities of Hitler’s Storm Troopers and brown-shirted thugs. Coupled with what everybody talked about regarding the persecution of Jews in Germany and the arrival of German Jewish refugees in South Africa, these circumstances made an indelible impression on young Jewish children. As a ten year-old, I was certainly worried about the state of things. My brother recalls a letter I wrote to him when he was in hospital, informing him solemnly that Mr. Chamberlain had declared war on Germany.
Then there was the backdrop of the Yidisher Kultur Farein, an organization which attracted left-wing Jewish people like my late parents (who were also associated with the Ort-Oze). There were reminiscences of grand picnics – and photographs – as lasting souvenirs of a Yiddish social movement which was to decline as the pre-war period came to a close. My parents were Yiddishists, not Zionists, and actively supported the development of Yiddish theatre and literature. We had a sizeable Yiddish library, which included a full set of Shalom Aleichem’s works and those of other well-known Jewish authors such as Shalom Ash. Abridged versions of Shalom Aleichem’s short stories about Tevyah the Milchika and life in the shtetl were part of my bed time reading. The beautifully bound books were donated by my mother to the Jewish Workers’ Club, but I have no knowledge as to where they got to when the Club was no longer on the scene and I was in exile.
My father passed away when I was five years old, but before then, he was active in the campaign for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Birobidjan and was eventually elected its chairman. Stalin’s Soviet emissary, Gina Medem, who was in charge of the Birobidjan project, was much talked about by my mother for many years after this dreadful idea had faded away.
If not for changed family circumstances, I too would have been sent to the Yidisher Volkshul. My older brother and sister were sent there, rather than cheder, to learn Yiddish (although I have to say, we never heard them speak it). Perhaps they were able to communicate with my father’s family, whom my mother brought out from Lithuania about two years after he died.
My mother talked a lot about her home town in Lithuania and told stories about pogroms and the gendarmes who would come into people’s homes. The nickname for the latter was ‘Buttons’ – a reference to the numerous buttons on their tunics. My mother carried on her interest in the Ort-Oze (she was secretary of her local branch in Johannesburg) until her untimely death in 1965. Both my parents’ interests were entirely secular. Although my maternal grandfather had a post as a shochet and a mohel at the Gardens Synagogue in Cape Town and my paternal one with a shul in Johannesburg, we were not brought up in a religious setting, and did not relate easily to religious ritual.
School at Yeoville Boys, and later Athlone High, in Johannesburg was neither interesting nor seriously eventful. We were all English speaking, barring a sprinkling of Afrikaners. During the early period of the war, many English-speaking teachers joined the armed services, while a good number of Afrikaans teachers – with Nationalist sentiments regarding the war and Jewish people – took the opportunity to show their hostility.
Most of the kids who lived in Yeoville were Jewish and attended the local school. One incident which riled some us was when one of the teachers referred to Jews as ‘mongrels’. My brother and I, along with a number of others, reported this to our respective parents, who met with the principal to protest. There was no meaningful outcome to this intervention and the culprit was neither removed nor seen to be remorseful. However, the anger that this incident generated and the radical approach of some of the parents was a good lesson in standing up for one’s dignity.
When my twin brother Norman and myself were still young our sister, who had been a member of Habonim, enrolled us in the Johannesburg Berea Hashstilim. This did not make an impact on me. However, a year later a school friend introduced me to the Hashomer Hatzair, which both inspired and influenced me considerably. This was where I met Baruch Hirson and some others who became active in liberation politics. Joe Slovo was just passing out of “the movement” and later emerged in the Young Communist League (YCL).
The Hashomer Hatzair was unconventional, radical in its approach to family, religion and social attitudes. The movement’s rejection of bourgeois values was far more pronounced than I was to find in the Communist Party and later the liberation movements. Its orientation was distinctly socialist and its emphasis was the class struggle and Marxian political economy. With regard to the question of a Jewish state, its solution was strictly Borochovian and centered on the notion of a single bi-national state. However, the Hashomer Hatzair’s primary focus was on socialism, and there was also some outreach to the anti-fascist campaigns of the South African left. I stayed close to the movement until I was seventeen, but was torn between the life of a chalutz on a kibbutz on the one hand and the ideological pull of Marxism, the struggle against racialism in South Africa, poverty in the African townships and unjust laws on the other. There was not enough Zionism, religion or sentiment about Israel in my background to sustain an allegiance to the Israeli solution to the struggle of the Jewish people against antisemitism. Like many other Jewish leftists, I saw only a socialist solution to the Jewish problem.
While still a member of the Hashomer Hatzair and quite young, I began attending meetings of the Left Book Club. There, people crossed the color line, and enjoyed the opportunity of talking to black, colored and Indian people and be entertained by a mixed group of performers. From time to time, there would be African or Indian speakers who talked about racism in South Africa. This multiracial setting was unusual and I was certainly conscious of the fact that I was into something special. Involvement in a multiracial struggle for basic human rights was to be the strategic direction of my life from my teens, inside and outside of jail, amidst multiple banning orders and restrictions, from my early twenties until exile at the age of 33 and beyond.
Eventually, I joined the Communist Party. Its members were no strangers to me. As a schoolboy I helped in election campaigns. The election room was in our house and leased by my mother to the local party branch. Over several years, candidates such as Issy Wolfson, Hilda Watts (Bernstein), Michael Harmel and Percy Cohen stood for election to the Johannesburg City Council. Members from all over Johannesburg participated, and I came to know them well.
I also met many activists at the End Street Night School, where we taught Africans to read, write and count. Myrtle Berman was the principal.
At the YCL, there was Ruth First and other men and women students of their generation. They spoke inspiringly about unjust laws, the plight of farm and mine workers, the causes of war and anti fascism and I, a schoolboy, held them in awe. The majority of white people involved in all these activities were Jewish, but one bonded with them not because of this but for their socialist ideals. Interestingly, it was the Hashomer Hatzair which criticised the Jewish community for its obsession with conforming to religion and community politics.
Inevitably, it was the labor movement to which I was drawn. I was greatly influenced by the militancy, dedication and genuine culture of caring that I saw in people like J.B. Marks, who led the great Miners’ Strike of 1946, and Betty du Toit, a clever strategist and astute negotiator. I had read about them and later actually met and worked with many such active trade unionist. Many were white and Jewish, with long traditions of innovative and successful campaigning for the establishment of African trade unions, industrial councils and federations. They were the pioneers of multi-racial trade union organizations. Names that come to mind are Eli Weinberg, Issy and Julia Wolfson, Solly Sachs, Beila Page and Katie Kagan.
It was Ray Alexander, however, whose influence and inspiration was particularly significant. I struck up a great friendship and enjoyed an exceptionally important working relationship with her. She was a master of good trade union governance and democratic participation, creating an impressive shop steward culture which included solemn responsibilities regarding careful attention to finances, attention to members’ basic needs and arranging democratic, meaningful report-back meetings. This was the small beginning of a shop stewards movement which in the years to come would be a vast addition to civil society in the form of a shop steward movement under the auspices of COSATU and other important trade union federations.
Ray was already transforming her individual trade union, the Fruit and Canning Workers’ Union, into a social union movement in its own right. She was way ahead of her time in bringing together bread and butter trade unionism with the struggle against unjust laws and issues such as housing, education, transport and crèches. She never forgot her roots in Riga and her association with the equivalent of the Ort-Oze and underground activities with her Jewish comrades.
I was to take a leaf out of Ray’s book when I became the President of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) and strongly supported the idea of a social union movement involving an alliance with the ANC and other congresses in the formation of what was to become the Congress Alliance. The Alliance stood the test of time, and although its merits are now much discussed, it constitutes the strategic base from which the political dynamics of South Africa flow today.
The work and influence of SACTU made a considerable impact on previously unorganised workers who responded to the numerous campaigns regarding wages and working conditions. They participated in protests and stayaways regarding pass laws and job reservation. SACTU became the first Social Union movement in South Africa and was an active force in the campaign for the Congress of the People, which adopted the Freedom Charter in 1955. As a signatory to the Charter, SACTU was now committed to the Alliance’s programme, which in turn had the effect of courting more police pressure, raids on local offices and banning of leaders.
The formation of this multi racial trade union organization was inspired and influenced by the legacies of a trade union leadership which came from different roots. Some, like Johanna and Hester Cornelius, Anna Scheepers, Mike Muller and Betty du Toit, were influenced by the poverty of the Afrikaner bywoner. Some of the Jewish trade union activists carried on the traditions they learned in Eastern Europe
However, by the time we formed SACTU all the main actors – white, African, Indian and colored – were banned and restricted. Those who came forward to carry the baton were, like me, extremely young, inexperienced and mainly in their early twenties and thirties. By the time we gained experience and became effective, the pattern of banning, restriction, arrest and detention was continually repeated. This onslaught culminated in the arrest of 156 people, constituting the effective new leadership of the Congress Alliance and including 26 trade union leaders, on charges of High Treason. The prosecution subsequently reduced the number of accused to thirty, including myself, and cited those that were dropped as co-accused in the event of a successful outcome.
The Treason Trial inspired and influenced all the accused leaders of the Congress Alliance. At its commencement, there were 23 white activists, of whom fifteen were Jewish. The trial, in which the defense team was led by Isie Maisels, supported by Sydney Kentridge, Bram Fischer, Vernon Berrange and others, lasted for nearly five years and probed the rationale for our involvement in the struggle and the meaning of the liberation movement.
Was the Jewish community concerned about the plight of Jewish victims of the struggle against apartheid? Certainly not during the years before I went into exile. In fact, it ostracized Jewish victims of banning, detention and imprisonment, which had the effect of excommunicating them.
A little example I would like to give you is the experience I had when I was in solitary confinement in 1960. Clergymen of different faiths visited detainees and prisoners to comfort and talk to them about their health and families. When the local rabbi met me, however, he told me that he did not know why he was actually talking to me as his congregation was not interested in the political likes of people like myself. He did not ask about my family, or whether I would like him to make contact with my mother or other members of it. In spite of the need to talk to someone, I terminated the visit, preferring rather to return to solitary confinement.
Did my Jewishness help or hinder my involvement. I think it helped and gave it continuity, substance and purpose. However, I have to say that although the contribution of the Jewish left was of historic value, the community as a whole, except for some notable groups, did not share our enthusiasm or offer its support for a transformed and non-racist society. This, however, was in line with prevailing attitudes of all white people in South Africa. Now that we have a new dispensation, I would like to believe that forums like Limmud will encourage and stimulate the present generation of South African Jews to reach out to those members of the community who are continuing in the footsteps of those who stood up to be counted.
Leon Levy is a trade unionist and former anti-apartheid activist, who co-founded the first multi-racial trade union federation in South Africa and served as President for nine years. During the 1950s and 1960s, he was banned and detained frequently for his activities, and was amongst the accused in the 1956-1961 Treason Trial. In exile in the UK, he continued with labour relations research and dispute resolution. On returning to South Africa, he wrote numerous publications on labour relations and the new labour legislation. This article is based on a lecture he presented at Limmud in Cape Town in August 2008.
