By: Johnny Copelyn, Rabbi Dr Warren Goldstein, Zev Krengel, Vol. 69, No. 2, Rosh Hashanah 2014)
Editor’s Note: On 3 April 2014, as part of a series of events to mark twenty years of democracy in South Africa, the SA Jewish Board of Deputies hosted political, religious and civil society leaders and members of the media to a special Freedom Seder. The event, held at the historic Villa Arcadia premises, celebrated the twentieth anniversary of freedom in South Africa in the context of the age-old story of the liberation of the Jewish people from Egyptian slavery. Speakers included legendary anti-apartheid activist Mac Maharaj, former trade unionist Johnny Copelyn, Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein and CNN Anchor Robyn Curnow (who spoke on the scourge of modern-day slavery). Introductory remarks were given by SAJBD Chairman Mary Kluk while SAJBD President Zev Krengel introduced the speakers. The following comprises an edited version of some of these presentations.
- Feature image: Johnny Copelyn and Zev Krengel with Mac Maharaj, SAJBD Freedom Seder, 3 April 2014
Zev Krengel
“The battle of Jo’burg”; “Stockpile mania grips shoppers”; KwaZulu simmers”; “Kissinger team threatens to quit talks”; “IFP not in the election”; “9 killed as bomb rocks Johannesburg”; “Bomb attacks on West Rand taxis”; “Oosterbrook among the slain”…..
Where were you twenty years ago? Back then, I was serving as a peace monitor in the townships. I was with Ken Oosterbrook, one of the country’s leading press photographers, in Tokoza the morning he was killed. I remember seeing his body being dragged out at Natalspruit Hospital.
What concerns me very much today is that we, as South Africans, do not realise how many people lost their lives, and how much people sacrificed fighting for our freedom. This freedom many people now take for granted, without remembering what their predecessors did to achieve it. We have with us tonight several of those individuals who back then were making sure that the anticipated bloodbath as suggested by the horrific headlines of the time that I read out did not materialise.
It is often said that we are the ‘miracle nation’, and, notwithstanding that I am a religious man, it is my belief that it was ultimately the South African people who made that miracle come true. Let us not forget what confronted us back then. There were bombs going off around the country two weeks before the elections. Henry Kissinger, the world’s greatest negotiator, had given up on us. Yet we succeeded. Let us not forget the spirit of those times and how far we have come.
Chief Rabbi Dr. Warren Goldstein
A true democracy is messy. A true democracy is turbulent. A true democracy is a place where the dialogue and the conversation is not always so measured. It can be shrill and effusive. This is enabled by our freedom. In fact, even in the midst of a country confronting allegations of scandals – in the midst of that is the greatest proof of what our democracy is about. Here we live in a country where there is freedom and democracy, where there are institutions of State that are vibrant, active and robust. The very anguished debates that are taking place are the proof of its vibrancy.
It is this sense of perspective that Passover teaches us and which we hand down to our children. Passover teaches us that we are not just in the here and now. We realize that more than 3 000 years ago G-d took the children of Israel out of Egypt. There is a sense of perspective. Where did we come from? We come from origins of slavery and oppression and that is there to sensitize us to the concepts and the feelings of compassion and human dignity. Passover is about a perspective and about constructing a story, a narrative. It is about seeing the larger picture.
…There is one other lesson that I would like to share this evening. This is about how seven weeks after the liberation from Egypt, the children of Israel were standing at the foot of Mount Sinai. G-d thus teaches us that after liberation from Egypt came the journey all the way to Mount Sinai to indicate that freedom was not the end, but the beginning of the journey. This sends a very interesting message and that is that freedom is also a journey to a set of values. You cannot separate freedom from responsibilities. In South Africa, together with our Bill of Rights enshrining and protecting the human rights of every citizen, we also have the Bill of Responsibilities. According to this Bill – which is not a legal but an educational document – responsibilities come with rights. The message of the Bible is that
G-d took us from Egypt directly to Mount Sinai to say that together with freedom there has to be a sense of a value system of morals, integrity and a system of law and decency. The two go hand in hand. That is the key to our freedom in South Africa today, namely that together with our rights come responsibilities, and those responsibilities devolve upon on each and every single citizen in the country.
Johnny Copelyn
Johnny Copelyn (centre) with Mac Maharaj and Zev Krengel
I remember as a child going with my grandmother to John Orrs, a large department store in Johannesburg, and coming across a black woman with a child in obvious distress. She asked, do you know where there is a toilet for black people? My Gran replied, “I’m not sure, there must be one. Have you tried the basement”? And we left them to their own devices. I learned subsequently that there simply were no toilets for blacks – not in the basement, not anywhere.
Did we have laws for infanticide in Apartheid South Africa? Obviously we did not, but the truth is for all those years one in five black children died before the age of one. What rights did workers have to defend themselves? Firstly, they had no union rights, no rights to collective bargaining. In fact, trade unions were required by law to exclude Africans from membership. When I first started working in the unions in 1974, a booklet was produced for the textile industry by the national productivity institute and I remember reading with amazement that the labour turnover of workers of less than one year’s service that year was 119%. Put another way, it meant that of the several hundred workers that were hired, virtually all were fired during the course of the year. People were fired for being slow, for being ‘cheeky’, for being ‘sullen’, for being union members – for any particular reason. It was as simple as this: “You’re fired, so get out”. We also had separate education, and a colour bar that specifically stopped people from getting any training. We did not have a single black electrician, plumber or boiler maker. The first time a blasting certificate was issued to a person of colour was in 1988.
….In the Seder story, it says that G-d hardened Pharaoh’s heart, resulting in his having no pity at all despite all the plagues that were being sent down. And the issue is, did we in South Africa find that one way or another our hearts were hardened regarding the suffering that was going on around us? For myself, the most striking fact is that as Jews, as whites in this country, we lived very comfortably, despite all the humiliation we saw around us. I do not say that we did not have any sympathy or any pity, but by and large we were pretty comfortable with the way things were. And it was not only the laws that were like that – we were like that too. I grew up in a house, for example, where our domestic had her own cup – it was an enamel cup, especially for her. Her hands were washing our cups – how else were they going to get clean? – but the idea that her lips might touch our cups was another story altogether.
That is the place where we have come from. So where are we going in South Africa?
In the Torah, Datan and Aviram complain when the Jews, on getting to the first place on leaving Egypt, find that there is not enough water – moan, groan. They come to the Red Sea and do not know how to cross it – moan, groan. They get to the other side, and being Jews, start complaining about the food…
I think that this story from the Bible leaves us with two points to think about. One, which I have already made, is that what we, as Jews, should reflect on and never forget is how comfortable we were under apartheid. The second point is to recognise that we in South Africa have been blessed with something that was not given to the Egyptians. All free people celebrate when people who were enslaved achieve freedom, but there is another consequence and that is that the slave master is freed from his role as a slave master. In the case of the Egyptians that did not happen.
The King David Linksfield Primary School Choir singing Ma Nishtanaand Meshe’amda.
They continued to own slaves, even though they were not Jewish ones – it was a slave society. They never experienced the freedom that comes to a slave master when the slave goes free. In South Africa, we had a different opportunity. The reason is, we are now able to see how disgraceful apartheid was. There has been a certain upliftment in our own depth of humanity since we are no longer cast in the roles we used to be cast in. The result, twenty years later, is that while we are free to be like Datan and Aviram and moan as much as we like about South Africa’s problems, we have also thankfully come to recognise the past as worthy of our contempt, because each of us has been granted a piece of liberation and has become somewhat more human in our country.
