(An interview with Michael Schneider, Vol. 66, #2, Rosh Hashanah 2011)
Editor’s note: Born in the Boland, and long before his distinguished career in Jewish communal affairs, Michael Schneider, Secretary General Emeritus of the World Jewish Congress, played a dramatic but comparatively little-known role in the anti-apartheid struggle, culminating in a hair-raising escape from South Africa in 1964.The following interview with him, conducted by Steven Gruzd, Senior Researcher and Diplomatic Liaison at the SA Jewish Board of Deputies, took place on 22 July 2011, shortly before Schneider’s visit to South Africa to take part in the SAJBD national conference on 27-28 August.
The feature image shows Michael Schneider with former President Kgalema Motlanthe at the SAJBD National Conference in August 2011, where Schneider was presented with the SAJBD Human Rights Award (now called the Rabbi Cyril and Ann Harris Human Rights Award)
Q: When do you think your political consciousness about apartheid was first awakened?
A: I can clearly remember two traumatic experiences. The first was when I was when I was growing up – I was about 11 or 12. My family owned and ran a hotel in De Doorns in the Hex River Valley, northeast of Worcester, about 90 minutes outside of Cape Town. The canteen served drinks to the local colored community. I remember that vaaljapie – very cheap, newly-pressed raw young wine often mixed with sediment – was ninepence a glass, and sherry was a shilling. I used to watch the barman pour from decanters in this tiny canteen that was always packed with colored farmworkers.
A man went to the counter to buy his dop when someone started shouting, “Kaffir! Kaffir!” The barman picked up a leather whip, a sjambok, off a hook, and lashed out at this man. He caught him in the face. All the poor colored workers roared with laughter as this black man’s public humiliation. He caught my eye. He looked pained, bewildered and utterly helpless, not angry or hate-filled as I expected. That was just the way things were. I’ve never forgotten that look.And I thought to myself, “This man is a stranger in his own country!”
The second incident took place several years later, when I worked in the dispatch department of my uncle’s electrical wholesale business in Doornfontein in Johannesburg. A huge coil of cable came in, and we needed all hands on deck to move it. I went up to John, the invoice clerk, who was African – a lovely man, I used to give him my old work shirts – and said “John, come and help me.” One didn’t say “please” to black people in those days. He replied calmly, “No. I am not a laborer. I’m an invoice clerk.” I got angry, and screamed, “If you don’t, I’ll fire you!” He got up, and started moving the coil. I had asserted my whiteness over his blackness, and he had no choice but to kotow. But he never, ever looked me in the eye again.
I was profoundly affected, perplexed, as to why we as Jews in South Africa, whose grandparents and parents had fled pogroms in Lithuania, lost loved ones in the Holocaust, were now acting like a “master race” as white people, over millions of others.
Q: Why do you think your opposition to apartheid took such a radical form?
A: As a teenager, I had a strong Jewish and Zionist identity. I was the national treasurer of a youth movement, the Young Israel Society and we went to camp in Lakeside near Muizenberg. I remember playing rugby matches against Betar. Then, when I was still working for my uncle in Doornfontein, in my early twenties, before I made my way back to Cape Town, I was recruited by people connected to the ANC. Our group was later called the African Resistance Movement (ARM), and I was trained on how to knock down electricity pylons. We made a solemn pledge not to target civilians, not to hurt people. My garage in Sea Point had all the equipment – detonators, plastique explosive, gelignite. We once knocked out five signal points on the suburban commuter train line between Cape Town and Simon’s Town, bringing Cape Town’s commercial district to a complete standstill. Unfortunately, towards the end of our operations, when we had all left the country or were in prison, John Harris was ill-advised that he should plant bombs and then call the police to defuse them. But this bomb exploded and killed an old lady.1 John was caught, tried and hanged.
Q: I heard you were called the “White Pimpernel”, and one escapade involved the King David School bus?
A: Well, I’m not sure it was the “White Pimpernel”, but some newspaper reports did call me the “Pimpernel” because I had evaded a city-wide dragnet. Before I escaped, some jobs I took on were for the ANC. I was approached and asked to “borrow” the King David school bus, to transport 20 African nurses to the newly-independent Tanzania, as a present from the ANC.
With a forged letter ostensibly from SA State President CR Swart, I was disguised as an Anglican priest, and we picked up the nurses in Sophiatown in Johannesburg. An ANC member and I took the King David school bus to the Bechuanaland border (this was before Botswana became independent). We were met in the middle of nowhere – there was a table and tablecloth, and they sang Nkosi Sikileli’ iAfrika. I believe three of the nurses eventually married Tanzanian cabinet ministers. I also heard they couldn’t believe that I wasn’t a real priest! We drove back to Jo’burg and got the bus back in one piece before school opened on Monday morning. The school was an unknowing fellow conspirator.
Q: Tell us about your dramatic evasion of the Special Branch of the police.
A: One night in 1964, I was returning to my flat in Sea Point. When I walked into the front entrance of the building, there were two huge guys in raincoats. They looked strange, and I feared they were from Special Branch. I think they must have been just waiting for me to open my apartment door, to be sure it was me. I went to the first floor, and left the building via the back entrance. I walked onto Main Road Sea Point, and got a friend to drive me to Caledon Square. It was clear that the game was up. We had evaded capture for so long because the police did not suspect that most of us were white people. One of our members had been arrested and had cracked under severe pressure. He later turned state evidence and gave names and addresses – including mine. I checked into the Tudor Hotel in Market Square for the night. There was a huge manhunt for me in Cape Town.
I planned to head for London where I knew it would be cold, so the next day, I went to buy a coat – maybe that was my Jewish grandmother’s training – and bought a plane ticket to Jo’burg. At the entrance to the plane was another huge Afrikaner policeman. As I passed him to board the gangway, I realized I’d left my brand new coat on the chair. I was scared, but was not going to leave that coat! So I risked going back to fetch it, and boarded the plane to Johannesburg, where I was met by other ARM operatives. I saw that my cousin Ruben Mowszowski, another person associated with the ARM, was on the same plane. His family was at the departure gates, wide-eyed and in a white fright! He later made his way to Australia and is now a journalist back in Cape Town after decades of exile.
Q: How did you eventually escape from South Africa, and get to England?
A: Rosemary Wentzel – who later was tricked into a meeting with the Special Branch and dragged back to South Africa – drove us across an unguarded border to Swaziland. There I was met by a lawyer named Robin Scott-Smith, who put me up with a Polish aristocrat in Swaziland. I became the foreman to prune 8000 apple trees on his farm. I learned about growing apples from him and from a horticulture book! I spent six months there.
I cannot reveal the details of how I got back to Pretoria – I have promised people not to reveal their names. A “friend” provided me with a fake passport and then drove me across another unguarded border to Bechuanaland and provided me with a scooter, which I drove to Francistown. I’ve never been very good with directions, and came to a crossroads with no idea which was the right way! Luckily, I guessed correctly.I checked into a hotel and met some young British girls who were working in Bechuanaland on a programme similar to the US Peace Corps. They put me in touch with a British administrator, who found out I had a fake SA passport, and could potentially cause huge embarrassment.
Eventually, I was picked up in huge truck with 50 guerrillas from SWAPO (the South-West African People’s Organization, the Namibian liberation movement). They were en route to Kasane, separated by a 400-metre ferry ride across the Zambesi River to Kazungula, the border crossing into Northern Rhodesia (present-day Zambia). The SWAPO guys were off to Tanzania to be trained. There was huge debate around me – it was unheard of that a white man could be anti-apartheid in those days, and many suspected I was a spy for the SA government. Eventually, their leader swung them into taking me across the river. I agreed to pay a £50 fee to SWAPO when I arrived in London.
On the ferry, again, there were two white men, almost certainly Special Branch, who had caught up with me and were there to kidnap me. As I was in the company of the SWAPO guerrillas, they left me alone and turned back on a returning ferry.
At the border post, I caught another lucky break. The official stamping us in went to the toilet, so I quickly stamped my own passport and entered Northern Rhodesia. I boarded a train to Lusaka with my scooter, where I avoided the amorous advances of the train’s male customs official. I sought refuge at the British High Commission in Lusaka. They put me in prison for a few days, as they feared my being kidnapped again, and the Zambia Home Affairs Minister came to see me. I was helped by someone who bought me a ticket to London via Kampala in Uganda. At Heathrow, I applied for political asylum – the official seemed to be expecting me. I then spent a few days in Brixton Prison. I was released, and given £15, compliments of Her Majesty’s Government, in an envelope at Holburn Bridge.
I was then met by someone who took me to see Sam Nujoma, SWAPO leader in exile and later Namibia’s first president. I thanked him for the role played in my escape by his guerrillas, but I was embarrassed that I was not able to pay the debt of honor of £50 to him. I have not seen him since. I intend to visit him some time and to personally hand over the money!
Q: How then did you start your long career in Jewish communal affairs, and do you think that your experiences in South Africa influenced you?
A: Penniless in London, I started to look for a job. I had a choice between running a Quakers community centre or working for the London Jewish Welfare Board. The latter offered me £75 a year more, so that settled it! The rest, as they say, is history!
I’ve been involved in international Jewish public service for over 40 years now. I worked for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in Iran during and after the Khomeini revolution, and in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia during the Communist era. In 1983, they sent me to Ethiopia to establish welfare and development projects for that country’s Falasha population. I served as the JDC’s CEO from 1990 to 2003, and during my tenure, the Joint returned to the Soviet Union after its expulsion by Stalin in 1955. When the Soviet Union fell, we established an aid project for 250 000 impoverished elderly Jews, half of whom were former victims of Nazi persecution. We were also engaged in a decade-long series of rescues of Jews under duress in Iran, Syria, Yemen, and Bosnia. The Joint played a significant role in Operation Solomon which led to the airlift of 14000 Jews from Ethiopia to Israel. I’m convinced my training and experience in South Africa made me the right guy for the right job at the right time! I later became CEO of the World Jewish Restitution Organisation. And I have just retired as Secretary General of the World Jewish Congress. That is another story for another time.
Q: Any final thoughts?
A: Yes. I am not one of those who believe that the SA Jewish Board of Deputies should have been much more active in politics, to speak out against apartheid. Why point a finger at the Jews – what about the other white minorities, like the Italians, Portuguese or Greeks in South Africa? As whites we were all guilty of complicity and we all benefited from our whiteness. You have to look at the circumstances – our grandparents had escaped the Bolsheviks and the Nazis, their relatives were obliterated in the Shoah, and BJ Vorster, South Africa’s second prime minister [after SA’s becoming a Republic in 1961] had spent World War II in jail for his pro-Nazi activities. There was fear of yet another persecution.
I was in Venezuela a while back and met with President Hugo Chávez, where ugly state-sponsored antisemitism is rife. We managed to establish a formal connection between the local Jewish community so that they can air their concerns. I take the same attitude – it can be dangerous for the Venezuelan Jewish communal umbrella (the CAIV) to get involved in politics. Yes, individuals can and should criticize what’s happening, but not in the name of the communal infrastructure. I saw this in Iran – the regime insisted that local Jews demonstrate in public with banners denouncing Israel – especially after an Israeli military operation, or face prison or even worse. They had no choice.
Finally, I really do not want to be made out as a big Jewish hero, and frankly I am not seeking the limelight and am a little embarrassed. Many of my colleagues spent years in prison. Others who cracked under pressure of beatings by the Special Branch have spent their lives with spirits broken and under a cloud of shame.
Notes
- The incident occurred at Johannesburg’s Park Station on 24 June 1964. For reasons that have never been established, telephonic warnings conveyed beforehand to the authorities to enable them to clear the area were ignored.
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