(Author: David Saks, Vol. 71, No. 1, Pesach 2016)
In the 1930s and ‘40s, radical antisemitism in South Africa reached heights of virulence never before attained, and never to be equalled thereafter. In the introduction to his acclaimed new book, A Perfect Storm: Antisemitism in South Africa, 1930-1948, Professor Milton Shain sums up the situation that confronted the Jewish community, the majority of whose members were first generation immigrants from Eastern Europe, during those years:
… (R)adical right movements …. mushroomed across the country, flourishing especially in the southwestern and eastern Cape Province, northern Natal and on the Witwatersrand. Doing their best to appeal to dislocated and unskilled whites, these movements consistently blamed the Jew for the country’s woes. By mid-1936 six independently branded ‘Shirtist’ groups were in existence, some operating as breakaways, others newly created. Led for the most part by disillusioned and angry young men, these fascist clones traversed the country aping the politics of their European mentors. Filled with conspiratorial bluster, they crudely alerted South African whites to the exploitative, menacing and evil Jew. Propagating fantasies, flirting with notions of ‘Aryanism, and peddling international Jewish conspiracies and other outrageous fabrications, they took advantage of enhanced rail and road communications and improved literacy to spread their toxic message.
The most prominent of these right-wing groups was the South African National Party (SANP), headed by Louis Weichardt. Better known as the Greyshirts, the party had its headquarters in Cape Town and maintained branches in all four provinces. Himself of German extraction, Weichardt dedicated his efforts in the pre-war years to spreading the doctrine of National Socialism throughout the country, and to that end relied heavily on crude Jew-baiting strategies. His activities comprise a sizable part of Shain’s study. Other right-wing organisations with explicitly antisemitic programmes active during the period included the Suid-Afrikaanse Nasionale Demokratiese Beweging (Blackshirts), Bond van Nasionale Werkers (Brownshirts), Oranjehemde (Orangeshirts) and Volksbeweging (aka the South African Gentile Organisation).
Even in its heyday, the radical right operated on the margins of South African politics, and were decisively defeated on the few occasions that they put up candidates for election. However, the influence they exercised on the policies of the mainstream parties was far from negligible. As Shain demonstrates, they “succeeded in shifting the ‘Jewish Question’ from the political margins of South African public life to its centre”, with the result that matters relating to Jewish immigration and their place in the economy being serious topics of debate in Parliament as well as hot-button issues at election time. While economic restrictions were never placed on Jews, the agitation was decisive in the passage of further legislation restricting Jewish immigration, viz. the Aliens Act of 1937. Antisemitism was a major issue in the 1938 General Election, when it was used by the opposition as a stick with which to beat the government. As for the actual performance of ultra-right candidates in elections, the fact that they invariably lost their deposits does not mean that the number of votes they gained was of no significance. Shain describes a by-election in Port Elizabeth, where the candidate for the Gesuiwerde Nasionale Party (as the National Party opposition was then calling itself) lost by only 90 votes. Had the pro-Afrikaner Nationalist vote not been split by the SANP, whose candidate received nearly 500 votes, the seat would have gone to the Nationalists. Such development will have contributed to the NP itself adopting an antisemitic platform after 1930, since it was obviously a message that resonated strongly with part of its core constituency.
Antisemitism was especially pronounced in Afrikaner nationalist circles. This can be explained in large part both by the prevalence of severe poverty (‘Poor Whiteism’) in the Afrikaner community and by the rapid burgeoning during those years of an assertive, exclusive form of Afrikaner nationalism, which mirrored in many ways the basic tenets of German National Socialism. One of the reasons for why many identified strongly with Germany was because of its antagonistic relationship towards Great Britain, the bête noire of Afrikanerdom. Bitter memories of the Anglo-Boer War and the loss of independence of the two Boer republics were still very much to the fore in the 1930s.
Antisemitic notions, albeit not to the same degree, were common currency amongst English speakers as well, including some prominent intellectuals. A particularly egregious example of the latter was UCT Law Professor Kerr Wylie, whose observations on Jews included his remarking (in a letter to University of Cape Town Principal Sir Carruthers Beattie), “Everything point to the fact that the Jews’ game in South Africa is up, and, if they have any sense, they will realise the fact and try to effect compromise. But history shows that the greed for gold and lust for power is so engrained in the Jewish race that they will cling to their gold and power until it is too late”.
On Wylie, Shain observes, “That a Professor of Law at the University of Cape Town could so brazenly display his anti-Jewish prejudices suggests a certain confidence that antisemitic comments were acceptable, even at the highest level”. Taking this further, it would explain why by and large (and not forgetting such honorable exceptions as J C Smuts and J H Hofmeyr) even people with genuinely liberal leanings tended to be distinctly lethargic when it came to confronting it. Indeed, on closer examination (as the example of Governor-General Patrick Duncan shows), many had to at least some extent taken on board certain anti-Jewish tropes in their own thinking. It is further apparent that even while a broad majority of white South Africans rejected the more rabid forms of antisemitism being propagated by the extreme right, the general sentiment was that there had been enough Jewish immigration and that measures needed to be taken to curtail it.
Shain’s book has considerable value for the fresh insights it provides into the unfolding of white political developments during that time, particularly the rise of the Gesuiwerde Nasionale Party (‘Purified National Party’, formed as a breakaway from the ruling United Party in 1935) and the rise of a resurgent and aggressive Afrikaner nationalism. Moreover, one can hardly miss the resonance its themes have in terms of what is happening in South Africa in our own times.
In his address last November at the Cape Town launch of the book (the full text of which appears elsewhere in this Jewish Affairsissue), Tony Leon caused ructions by drawing parallels between South Africa as it was then and the situation today, commenting that, “The presumed power and wealth of the 1930s Jewish community, finds contemporary expression in the attacks, on all fronts these days, on the white community as a whole in South Africa”. Back then, Jews were scapegoated as the cause of the country’s economic plight, accused of excessive control of the economy and depicted as being an alien, unassimilable element operating as the agents of sinister foreign powers. This, increasingly, was how whites were now being spoken of.
Leon further suggested that today’s controversial “black empowerment” questions also have their counterpart back in the 1930s when Hendrik Verwoerd, amongst others, argued for quotas limiting the number of Jews in the professions and the economy and thereby facilitate the socio-economic upliftment of the Afrikaner. There is merit in that comparison, but in this writer’s view, closer parallels can be drawn between racial quotas to advance Black empowerment in our own times and the National Party’s programme (with the shadowy Broederbond active behind the scenes) to move Afrikaners into all levels of the civil service and other State structures, from the top leadership positions downwards (this included, of course, significant interference in the sports arena).
Leon has interesting observations to make about Dr D F Malan, leader of the National Party in the period the book covers. He notes that while not sharing the extreme antisemitic views of the extreme right, Malan did not scruple to exploit such sentiments for political gain, notably when attacking the United Party government of the day. The situations may differ in many important ways, but it can hardly be denied that today’s ruling party is increasingly resorting to anti-white racial rhetoric as a way of keeping its supporters within the fold. This tactic, of course, has from the outset been at the core of the programme of the Economic Freedom Front (EFF). In the Western Cape, former African National Congress Provincial Leader Marius Fransman has even on occasion singled out Jews for special negative attention (such as alleging during a 2013 radio interview that Jewish businessmen were unfairly benefiting at the expense of Muslims through the iniquitous policies of the DA).
Without pushing the comparison too closely, it is not altogether fanciful to see today’s ANC and EFF as being in some way the counterparts of the National Party and the radical right-wing movements of the 1930s and ‘40s. The former are now to a greater or lesser extent pushing what is essentially a black empowerment agenda, one of the clearest proofs for this being that the Coloured (mixed race) and Indian minorities have long supported the official opposition Democratic Alliance, alongside their erstwhile white oppressors. Taking this further, one might even liken the ANC that won the inaugural democratic, multi-racial elections in 1994 to the pre-1948 United Party government. Both, in their particular contexts, sought to provide a broad tent within which all components of the electorate would feel comfortable. The UP eventually fell because a growing proportion of the electorate came to support the promotion of a more exclusive Afrikaner nationalism. Similarly, the ANC has since changed its focus in response to pressures from its own core support base favoring black empowerment and upliftment over that of other, minority, racial groups.
A common theme of antisemitic discourse in pre-1948 South Africa was, naturally, that Jews exercised too much economic power, to the detriment of the rest of the white population. Shain records how Weichardt, citing “outrageously inflated statistics”, would tell audiences that 90% of licensed hotels, 100% of wholesale butcheries, the stock exchange, theatres and bioscopes”, 70% of retailers and 90% of the press were in Jewish hands. As was intended, such ‘revelations’ did much to stir up feelings of resentment and distrust against Jews, and to at least some degree we are seeing similarly emotive, and factually questionable, claims being made about whites in 2016. The afore-mentioned Fransman, for example, told the Cape Town Press Club in October 2013 that whites (and particularly Jews) constituted 98% of land owners and property owners – a palpably incorrect assertion. As the economic situation of South Africa worsens, such claims, often accompanied by aggressive demands for restitution, have become commonplace.
Discussing parallels between South Africa as it was then and as it is now is a perfectly valid approach to Shain’s book, but in doing so, one must also make sure to point out where the respective situations differ. For a start, it means distinguishing between the motivations behind the kind of charges levelled against pre-war Jewry and those currently being made against whites.
In terms of their small numbers, Jews were – as they are today – indeed disproportionately represented in business and the professions. Likewise, whites remain disproportionately represented in the economy, even two decades after the transition to democracy. The difference is that Jewish success back then did not come about because Jews were given an unfair advantage at the expense of the rest of the population. There was no legislation that specifically discriminated against other whites and therefore prevented them from achieving the same thing. Jews, in other words, essentially succeeded by their own efforts. When it comes to understanding why whites are disproportionately represented in the economy, on the other hand, one cannot say the same thing. True, the discriminatory laws of the apartheid era that made it all but impossible for blacks to progress beyond a certain level have long been consigned to history. It is also true that the law now discriminates against whites in the job market (albeit not to nearly the same extent as was the case under apartheid’s ‘colour bar’ legislation). However, it is undeniable that to a greater or lesser extent, whites continue to benefit from what was acquired – whether by themselves directly, or by their forebears – under the apartheid system, and prior to that through the colonisation process. There is, in other words, a very real legacy of historical injustice that has somehow to be rectified.
Regarding pre-war anti-Jewish prejudice, this can only in part be attributed to factors like political expediency and fears of competition at a time of widespread economic hardship. Shain stresses that the Jew-baiting rhetoric of the time “resonated precisely because a widely shared negative Jewish stereotype had been firmly laid in the preceding decades”. By contrast, anti-white feeling amongst blacks, rather than being driven by crude race or religious-based prejudices, are rooted in very real and bitter historical experiences, even if this often manifests in questionable generalisations, over-statements or factual inaccuracies.
Engrained prejudice dies hard. Beneath the surface, racist notions continue to fester in South Africa, as the bitter furor that erupted in the early weeks of 2016 over racist Facebook comments by white Durban resident Penny Sparrow made all too clear. At the same time, we find that resentment over wrongs endured in the past does not simply disappear once the cause of that resentment has been removed. Rather, it, too, lingers within the collective consciousness of the former victims, often resulting in their discriminating against and even oppressing others in their turn. Thus was the case regarding Afrikaner nationalism, which was to great extent driven by an abiding sense of injustice over their loss of independence to Great Britain. Something similar appears to be unfolding within black African politics today, and particularly amongst the youth. Sometimes, the Jewish community is denounced specifically – this theme appears frequently in the social media arena, as well as on radio phone-in shows. In KwaZulu-Natal Province, it regularly surfaces in rhetoric against the economically prosperous Indian minority. Primarily, though, the hostility is being directed at whites, and as the frenzied and often overtly threatening reaction to the whole Penny Sparrow affair demonstrated, these feelings run alarmingly deep. Sparrow’s likening of black beach-goers to monkeys was shameful, and she deserved all the opprobrium she received. Even more shocking, however, was the succeeding torrent of tweets and Facebook comments calling for whites to be, inter alia, massacred, raped, dispossessed and expelled from South Africa. Clearly, the responses were about more than just one white woman’s racist musings.
A Perfect Storm concludes with the General Election of 1948, in which Malan’s National Party emerged triumphant over Smuts’ United Party and went on to rule South Africa for the next 45 years. Shain records how even before gaining their objective of achieving political power, the focus of the NP had moved sharply away from pushing antisemitic ideologies, and that in the election itself, antisemitic motifs played that hardly any role. The ban against Jews joining the NP in the Transvaal was soon afterwards lifted and Malan was the first foreign head of state to visit Israel. No doubt, Shain is correct in attributing this shift in part to the fact that the destruction of most of European Jewry in the war and the creation of Israel had removed the perceived threat of large-scale Jewish immigration. As he also stresses, however, the paramount political issue for whites in the post-war era was the preservation of white power and privilege against the growing resistance of the black majority. For this, unnecessarily dividing the white population through sowing conflict between its various ethnic constituencies had to be avoided. An additional reason for the abating of anti-Jewish sentiment was the steady socio-economic advancement of Afrikaners, a process that was already well underway even before the war.
If the National Party post-1948 eschewed antisemitism, the same could not be said for antisemites. Amongst those with antisemitic records who went on to enjoy long political careers within the party were three future Prime Ministers (Hendrik Verwoerd, Hans Strijdom and B J Vorster), one State President (C R Swart) and at least two Cabinet Ministers (Eric Louw and Oswald Pirow). As for Louis Weichardt, he went on to serve for fourteen years as a Senator for Natal, while Johannes von Strauss von Moltke became an MP for a South West African constituency. The presence after 1948 of former Nazi sympathisers and crusading antisemites within the leadership of the ruling National Party can never be downplayed when assessing the collective political behavior of the Jewish community during the apartheid era.
In the early part of the 20th Century, when people spoke about the problem of ‘racism’ in South Africa, they were referring to tensions between the English and Afrikaner sections of the white community. Only much later did prejudice against what can broadly be termed “people of color” become an issue; prior to that, it was considered quite normal, even in liberal circles, to hold and express derogatory views about blacks, and for that matter people of mixed race and Asians.
Similarly, prejudice against Jews – whether based on religious or racial grounds or, as was usually the case, on both – was not seen as being something to be particularly embarrassed about. Only after World War II, for various reasons, did antisemitism, at least when openly expressed, become taboo in polite society, and by and large that is the case today. A Perfect Storm, which builds on Shain’s previous groundbreaking work in this area, is undoubtedly the definitive study of a period when anti-Jewish sentiment in South Africa took on a virulent, programmatic new form, one that went far beyond the relatively casual manner in which it had manifested before. Beyond its value in terms of purely South African historiography, it is a significant contribution to the literature on global antisemitism in the pre-Holocaust era and on the kind of thinking that ultimately made the Holocaust possible.
David Saks is Associate Director of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies and Editor of Jewish Affairs.
