(Author: Solly Kessler, Vol. 77, #2, 2022)
Having been allotted just a few minutes for an overview of the Cape SA Jewish Board of Deputies’ past, I shall only speak of the last fifty years, during which I was personally involved in the Board. Most of that period corresponded to the reign of apartheid, when our community was particularly, and perhaps uniquely, tested.
I was not a political activist – I did not give up my university studies or my home or profession, or go underground or into exile, to fight the apartheid regime, as some very special people in our community did. Although they may not have recognised it then or even now, I believe those special people had subliminally heard and been influenced by the melody of prophetic Judaism already in their mother’s womb, the Jewish melody that
sings of the brotherhood of man, respect for the dignity of all men, the injunction to remove the shackles of the oppressed.
I, together with others, some of whom I am glad to say are in this room today, tried to influence our community leaders to speak out against apartheid. In 1959 I unsuccessfully moved a resolution to that effect at the Board’s national Congress, and in 1985 I drafted and moved, on behalf of the Cape, the resolution that the national Congress adopted, in a somewhat watered down form, expressly condemning apartheid for the first time.
But my personal role in the Board is not important. Rather, I speak here today for an important purpose, namely, to bear witness to the fact that all our leaders, both in the Cape and nationally, whether we in the Cape or elsewhere in the country agreed with them or not at the time, all the leaders only acted out of concern for the welfare of the community, and
adopted policies that they genuinely, on very arguable grounds, and in the light of the serious constraints of the time, believed to be in the best interests of our community.
I cannot agree with those who have condemned those leaders, or who have made apologies for them, or, indeed, for our community. History will make the final judgment as to whether the policies or actions of our leaders were right or wrong in the circumstances of the time. We can certainly debate that. But I believe that history will never dispute the bona fides of our leaders. I say, as one who was acquainted with almost all of them during most of the apartheid period, and with all the passion that I can command, our leaders made no Faustian pact with the devil, and they do not deserve the scorn that is often poured on them.
Those of you who were too young or who were not or not yet born in the heyday of the apartheid regime or were not in this country in those days really know, and even the older ones among you may have already forgotten, the climate of those times.
In the thirties and the war years, our community had been severely afflicted by the virulent Nazism and antisemitism of so many of the rest of the white community. The Board in 1938 even had to commission the publication of the book Die Sondebok (“The Scapegoat”) by Abraham Jonker to try to ward off terrible Afrikaner attacks on the community.
In 1948, most of the Jew-hating Afrikaner leaders came to power, and our community had to listen to vicious anti-Jewish diatribes emanating from Parliament, with hate speech and assaults from Afrikaner extremists all over the country, and often, too, from very vocal English-speaking antisemites.
Let me give you a thumbnail picture of South Africa in the heyday of the Nationalist government. This was not one country, but two. The Blacks were effectively pushed into a ghetto. The whites were effectively separated and cut off from the Blacks, and thus, in a sense, the whites also lived in a ghetto. The government-controlled radio, its censoring and even banning of the press, the silencing and jailing of the Black leaders, and the inability of the whites to interact with Blacks, were all designed to prevent the whites from hearing the cries of the Black oppressed, and, later, were designed to persuade the white population that the apartheid policy was even in the best interests of the Blacks.
Someone once said that freedom is indivisible. While Blacks were certainly not free, in a sense the whites were not free either, prevented by a heartless government apparatus from hearing and responding to the cries of the disenfranchised in case the whites would see the injustice of the regime and boot the Nats out of office. The order of the day was nothing less than intimidation.
The Black editor of the Sunday Times last week summed up the position well when he wrote, “Apartheid needed shadowy enemies because fear was the glue that kept Afrikanerdom loyal to the Nats. If it wasn’t the communists who were up to no good, then it was the Catholics. If it was not the imminent invasion by hordes from Black Africa, then it was the manipulation of the economy by the Jews.”
The Jewish community had very good reason to be fearful. The Nats counted amongst their leaders many who had vigorously opposed Jewish immigration, openly supported Nazism, and been rabid and vocal antisemites and even Holocaust deniers. On the other hand, our community was anxious to support the fledgling Israel, as it struggled to maintain itself, after rising like a Phoenix from the ashes of the Holocaust. There was always the threat by the Nats to cut off Jewish aid to Israel, and even to hold the Jewish community hostage for
some actions of Israel when, at the United Nations, it identified with the struggle of the Blacks.
The government often demanded that the Jewish leaders should condemn the Jewish activists, as, according to the government, they were stirring up the Blacks and endangering the country. The Board did not comply.
Let us not make the mistake of thinking that our community had the options that is has today. There was no Bill of Rights to rely on. Legislation that we Jews had not the slightest possibility to influence was trumped against all who disagreed with the government. It was futile to rely on the judiciary, dominated as they were by government-supporting appointees. The law and the courts, which should protect freedom and rights, were used as powerful
instruments of repression.
The government insisted that, what were essentially the moral issues that the policy of apartheid raised, were political. Accordingly, our community leaders felt that they could not drag the community, as such, into the realm of politics, and, hence, they encouraged Jews who wished to enter the political realm to speak and act as individuals, in their personal capacity. Even the moral voices of our Rabbinate were stifled, except for some few
outstanding and courageous individuals, some of whom we are privileged to have with us in this hall today. Apart from these exceptional people, our Rabbinate were afraid to speak up lest what they said might harm the Jewish community. In 1957, when Rabbi Dr Ungar in Port Elizabeth spoke out on public platforms against the Group Areas legislation, and, as a result, the government forced him to leave the country, the Rabbinate did not come to his assistance, and the national Board too said that he, as a Rabbi, should not have entered the sphere of politics.
I believe that we should stop beating our breasts about what we should or could have done insofar as the apartheid regime was concerned. The tragedy is not that we did not do what we should have done, but that we were effectively prevented by a pernicious system from being ourselves and asserting the true and eternal ethical values of our faith and culture.
Solly Kessler (1937-2013) was a distinguished Cape Town lawyer and Jewish communal leader, inter alia serving as chairman of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies Cape Council (1981-1983) and for many years as chairman of the SAJBD Constitution and Legislation Subcommittee. This article has been adapted from an address he delivered at the SAJBD – Cape Centenary Congress on 21 August 2004.
