(Author: David Saks, Vol. 80, #2, Summer 2025)
South Africa’s post-apartheid honeymoon, that halcyon period of renewed hope and unity of purpose characterising the national mood in the wake of the transition to democracy in 1994, has long been a distant memory. The disillusionment that so many of us who lived through those years now feel over the myriad betrayed hopes and disappointments of our present troubled times is considerable, and understandably so. It should not, however, be allowed to eclipse altogether our memories of how remarkable an achievement the democratic transition undoubtedly was, nor how for a time at least it made South Africa a genuinely powerful moral presence on the international stage.
It is rather striking that this country can claim the distinction of having nurtured perhaps the two foremost humanitarian and political liberation icons of the last century. One, of course, was Nelson Mandela who first became the globally recognised symbol of the struggle against Apartheid and thereafter of the process of reconciliation and nation building that followed. The other was Mohandas K Gandhi, whose activities in South Africa preceded by a decade or so Mandela’s birth in 1918. While he is primarily known as the architect of Indian independence, it was during his twenty years as a campaigner for Indian rights in South Africa that the foundations for Gandhi’s later development into the revered statesman that he became were laid.
What is not generally known is the remarkable extent to which Jews were involved in the respective careers of both these iconic leaders. During his years in South Africa, Gandhi was befriended and assisted by a significant number of Jewish community members, who in addition to providing his cause with crucial material support were actively involved in his political campaigns. Regarding Mandela, the disproportionate extent to which Jews played a part in his life and career is even more striking. While most South African Jews were not, of course, anti-apartheid activists, of all the various ethnicities making up the white population, none came even close to producing so high a number of those that were. This was notwithstanding the fact that as part of the privileged white caste, Jews might have been expected to look to safeguarding their own interests rather than jeopardising their privileged status by promoting the cause of the disempowered majority. It is also true that as a vulnerable minority that had itself been exposed to a great deal of prejudice and discrimination the Jewish community might reasonably have been expected to keep a lower profile than other sectors of the population, but the opposite was the case.
Nelson RolihlahlaMandela was born in 1918 in Qunu, Eastern Cape province. Very few Jews lived in this part of the country, and there is no evidence of his having engaged with any members of the community during his youth and early adulthood. This changed, however, following his arrival in Johannesburg in 1941. From that time onwards, right up until his death in December 2013, Jews would consistently play a part in his life.
The first meaningful connection between Mandela and SA Jewry was when he was taken on as an articled clerk at the law firm, Witkin, Sidelsky and Edelman. Of this, Mandela writes in his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, “It was a Jewish firm, and in my experience, I have found Jews to be more broad-minded than most whites on issues of race and politics, perhaps because they themselves have historically been victims of prejudice. The fact that Lazer Sidelsky, one of the firm’s partners, would take on a young African as an articled clerk – something almost unheard-of in those days – was evidence of that liberalism”. Even after becoming President, Mandela would good-humouredly refer to Lazar Sidelsky as his ‘boss’ and frequently pay him tribute for the many acts of support he received from him.
During his time at the firm Mandela’s fellow law clerk, Nat Bregman, became his first white friend in Johannesburg and, as a member of the Communist Party at the time, also played a part in his early political education. He later became a popular speaker at local Jewish communal events.
‘Boss’ Lazar Sidelsky, circa. 1995
Mandela went on to study law at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he established enduring friendships with such future anti-apartheid campaigners as Joe Slovo, Ruth First, Jules and Selma Browde and Harry Schwarz. Jules Browde, who became one of South Africa’s leading senior counsels, was the first of many Jewish lawyers to represent him in politically related trials. The case concerned an attempt to force the law firm established by Mandela and fellow activist Oliver Tambo to vacate its Johannesburg premises under the then Group Areas Act, which placed severe restrictions on where black people could live and work in the city. Appearing before the Land Tenure Advisory Board in Pretoria, Browde was able to obtain permission for them to stay where they were.
During the 1950s, in response to the barrage of racially discriminatory legislation introduced under the National Party’s Apartheid policy, Mandela became increasingly drawn into political activism. As a result, he found himself continually harassed by the security police and hauled before one court or another on charges of subversive activities. Jewish lawyers were prominently involved in defending him in these politically driven trials, among them Isie Maisels, Arthur Chaskalson, Joel Joffe and Sidney Kentridge. Maisels headed up the defense team during the so-called Treason Trial, which culminated in all charges against Mandela and thirty other accused being dismissed. A devoted Jew and passionate Zionist he was prominently involved in Jewish communal affairs, inter alia serving as president of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies, SA Zionist Federation and Federation of Synagogues. Chaskalson and Joffe were prominent members of the defence team during the subsequent ‘Rivonia Trial’ of 1963-4, where Mandela and various others were sentenced to life imprisonment. It was Chaskalson who Mandela later appointed as the country’s first Chief Justice following the transition to democracy.
Ironically, the notoriously over-zealous State Prosecutor in that trial, Percy Yutar, was also Jewish and like Maisels had held important communal leadership positions. As could have been predicted, his Jewish identity has since consistently been highlighted by those seeking to cast aspersions on the mainstream Jewish community for its political behaviour under apartheid – and latterly, for its support for Israel – whereas that of the many other lawyers who defended Mandela over the years has been all but ignored.
It was in his career as a political activist that Mandela’s close association with Jewish South Africans was most pronounced. Most of these were on the far-left of the political spectrum and members of the by then banned South African Communist Party. To illustrate the disproportionate involvement of Jews on the left, a good example is the above-mentioned Treason Trial, where fourteen of the 23 white defendants on trial (out of an initial total of 156) were of Jewish origin. They included such stalwarts as Lionel Bernstein, Ben Turok, Joe Slovo, Leon Levy and Ruth First, all of whom played a key part in the liberation struggle. Another revealing instance is how the founders of the underground military wing of the by then banned African National Congress (ANC), Umkhonto we Sizwe were Jewish. Among them were Denis Goldberg, Harold Wolpe and Arthur Goldreich. The latter is noteworthy for having served as a volunteer in the Israeli War of Independence, a rarity for someone on the generally anti-Zionist ‘Left’ (albeit that Goldreich himself was more of a radical liberal than a doctrinaire communist). Following a spectacular escape from police custody in 1963, he settled in Israel.
Jewish-born activists further played a critical part in organising the 1955 Congress of the People and subsequent drafting of the famous Freedom Charter, a declaration of aims and principles that henceforth provided the ideological bedrock of the liberation movements and ultimately form the basis of South Africa’s new constitution post-liberation. Lionel Bernstein was tasked with the actual drafting of the Charter, thereby making himself a kind of South African version of US Declaration of Independence drafter Thomas Jefferson, although he never took particular credit for it.
Mandela’s Jewish associates included classic liberals in addition to doctrinaire communists. Maisels, Harry Schwartz and the Browdes would fall into that category. Another was journalist Benjamin Pogrund, whose hard-hitting exposés of the injustices of apartheid made him the target for continual police harassment. Pogrund later also settled in Israel, becoming an influential voice in combating the notorious analogy between apartheid-era South Africa and modern-day Israel that those bent on delegitimizing the Jewish state have long been aggressively pushing. Post-7 October, the analogy most commonly being made is of course with Nazi Germany, a much more extreme calumny that may by now have rendered the apartheid analogy largely obsolete.
From 1962 until his release in February 1990, Mandela was a political prisoner. For the greater part of this time, he was cut off from the outside world, a banned person representing an illegal organisation prohibited from communicating with anyone beyond the prison walls. Even under these circumstances, however, a Jewish connection remained. One of those able to engage with him was Helen Suzman, the sole representative of the liberal Progressive Party in parliament. World renowned for her energetic and eloquent denunciation of the apartheid system, Suzman obtained permission to visit Robben Island, where Mandela and other political prisoners were incarcerated, in light of disturbing newspaper reports about the conditions under which the inmates were being held. She met with Mandela, who briefed her on the prisoners’ grievances – inadequate food and clothing, limited visits, having to sleep on bed rolls on the floor and the like. Suzman took up these issues with the authorities, resulting conditions on the Island improving considerably. She would meet with Mandela in prison on a further five occasions and was also part of a Jewish leadership delegation that met with him shortly after his release.
women’s gathering, Johannesburg, 1960s
During his long incarceration, Mandela’s international stature increased exponentially. Once no more than a local resistance leader unknown outside his native land, he became the world’s most famous political prisoner and a global icon of the struggle against racism and colonialism. It can be mentioned here that many of those Jewish activists who had fought alongside him in the anti-apartheid struggle and since been forced to go into exile were at the forefront of the “Free Mandela’ campaigns that took place the world over during the dying years of white rule.
Up until Mandela’s release, interactions between him and the Jewish community had been on the individual rather than the collective level. For the greater part of the Apartheid era, the mainstream Jewish community pursued an uneasy, and controversial, policy of neutrality regarding issues of a political nature. Only during the final years of apartheid did its leadership begin taking a more forthright public position against the system. In contrast to its previous apolitical stance, following Mandela’s release and the unbanning of the ANC and other anti-apartheid movements, Jewish leaders welcomed the country’s transformation and encouraged the Jewish community at large to likewise embrace and be a part of it. As a result, after 1990 Mandela regularly engaged with SA Jewry on a group as well an individual basis and he and the mainstream Jewish leadership forged a cordial relationship.
As the Jewish community’s elected representative voice, the SAJBD met regularly with Mandela, both to bring to his notice the community’s own concerns and to explore ways in which SA Jewry could work with his government in furthering the post-apartheid nation building process. In his first address to SA Jewry, delivered at the SAJBD’s biennial national conference in 1993, Mandela called on Jews to do their part in making good the enormous socio-economic equalities caused by Apartheid: “Yours is a community that has a deserved reputation for being well educated and for the skills it possesses – professional, commercial and industrial. I believe those skills can and should be used both to help the development of the country and to mount programmes, using your own knowledge and skills, to contribute to the development of those who have been denied fair opportunities” he said. Among those who responded were Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris and the eminent businessman and Jewish communal leader Bertram Lubner. Together, they founded Tikkun (now Afrika Tikkun), a Jewish social upliftment organization dedicated to assisting those previously disadvantaged by Apartheid.
“Of all the friendships I have been fortunate to enjoy, the most special is with Nelson Mandela” Chief Rabbi Harris wrote in his 2000 autobiography For Heaven’s Sake: The Chief Rabbi’s Diary. Together with his wife Ann, a lawyer and civil rights activist in her own right, Rabbi Harris was among those at the forefront of leading the Jewish community into the new era. Mandela would affectionately refer to Rabbi Harris as “my rabbi”.
Many other leading Jewish businessmen and philanthropists were prominently involved in social upliftment initiatives at Mandela’s behest. They included, inter alia, steel tycoon Eric Samson, pioneering retailer Raymond Ackerman, commercial radio pioneer Issie Kirsh and SA Breweries CEO Meyer Kahn. Samson and Mandela in particular collaborated on a range of significant philanthropic projects. The two first met in 1992, when Mandela was seeking donors to fund the purchase of houses needed for returning political exiles. As Samson described it, “By the time he was released, Mandela was already a legendary figure both at home and abroad, and I was intrigued to meet him – he was the future. At his home in Soweto I was immediately struck by his stature, the warmth that emanated from him, his friendliness and openness. We quickly got down to business. He told me how much the houses were and I said that’s fine, but suggested he let me do the negotiating. He was so excited and the next minute I was invited to accompany him to view the houses. Months later he remarked to my son Jeffrey, “If I ever need to do negotiations in the future, I know who to go to.”
The Israeli-Palestinian question was the one issue where South African Jewry and Mandela were often, and inevitably, at variance. During its first two decades, the State of Israel was a forthright opponent of apartheid on the international stage, one result of this being that the South African Jewish community come under much pressure from the Nationalist government to the point that subventions to Israel were for a time suspended. By the time of Mandela’s release, however, the situation had changed. Largely because of the drive by the Soviet Union and Arab states to isolate Israel in the international arena following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel-South Africa ties had deepened while during the latter stages of the Cold War the ANC had very much planted its standard in the pro-Soviet and therefore virulently anti-Israel camp. It had also forged close ties with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. The issue was thus always going to be a point of contention, and indeed, it dominated the agenda of the early meetings between Mandela and the Jewish leadership.
As it transpired, the gap between where the respective parties stood on the issue, at least so far as Mandela was concerned turned out to be narrower than originally feared. On the Israel-Palestine question, Mandela was deeply committed to the attainment of Palestinian statehood, but at the same time he recognized that this had to be accomplished through peaceful negotiations and was always steadfast in affirming Israel’s right to exist within secure borders. As he saw it, there was no reason why Israelis and Palestinians could not follow the South African route of negotiating a peaceful settlement; that this never happened was a source of much disappointment to him.
The contrast between Mandela’s essentially even-handed approach and the radically pro-Islamist position adopted by the South African government in the wake of the 7 October atrocities is a striking one. It is difficult to imagine Mandela donning a kefir and leading his supporters in chants of “From the River to the Sea”, an unambiguous call for the Jewish state to be eradicated, as did the current SA President Cyril Ramaphosa in the lead-up to the general elections held in May this year. Nor can one imagine a Mandela-headed government instituting charges of genocide, of all things, against Israel at the International Court of Justice. It is some comfort that the ANC subsequently performed disastrously in the elections, declining from 58% of the vote to under 40% and being forced to govern in coalition with opposition parties that oppose its virulent anti-Israel policies.
When Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa’s first post-Apartheid president in May 1994, both Israeli President Ezer Weizmann and PLO leader Yasser Arafat attended. Afterwards, at the request of then Israeli Ambassador Alon Liel, Mandela hosted the first ever meeting between the two leaders. According to Liel, “Mandela was hogged by both leaders, spent half an hour with them, then told both: ‘Take the nearby office and use the opportunity to settle your differences – good luck!!’ The two sat for three hours, but as you all know, we still need a Mandela to complete the mission”. That Mandela failed to appreciate the implacable and uncompromising nature of Palestinian rejectionism and the extent to which this was the antithesis of his own approach helps explain why his attempts to influence the situation came to nothing. It is undeniable, though that his attempts were sincere and well meant.
“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good” the 18th Century English intellectual Samuel Johnson once observed. J. K. Rowling said something similar: “If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals”. Both are applicable when considering the kind of person Nelson Mandela was, beyond the public figure and global statesman. In 2011 a book entitled Jewish Memories of Mandela (authored by this writer) was published under the auspices of the SAJBD. In large part, it was based on the personal reminiscences of Jewish community members who had interacted with Mandela over the decades, not only prominent personalities but ordinary members of the public. It was from the latter recollections that one often obtained the most striking insights into Mandela the man. In particular they showed how for all the phenomenal stature he achieved his sincere, unaffected respect for and concern about every person he met, regardless of colour, creed or status remained a core feature of his personality. Space allows for just one such anecdote, but it is reflective of many of the other stories that feature. It concerns Ilan Elkaim, a Jewish businessman then living in Bulawayo in the neighbouring state of Zimbabwe. Shortly after his release, Mandela was in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare to attend a conference and during a session break Elkaim was introduced to him. On being told asked if he spoke any indigenous languages, Elkaim answered in SiNdebele, and a brief conversation then ensued in his SiNdebele and Mandela’s Zulu, the two languages being very similar. “I was very proud to have engaged with such a wonderful and famous man” was how Elkaim saw it at the time. Naturally, he thought that that was the end of it, but it was not, as he relates: “About three years later, my wife and I went to the movies at the Carlton Hotel complex in Johannesburg. Afterwards, while returning to our car, we saw Mr. Mandela and his entourage descending from the escalator. My eyes met with Mandela’s and he nodded. I certainly did not think anything of this, but on getting off the escalator, he walked right up to me, greeted me in Zulu and asked how I was doing and how things were going in Bulawayo! I answered him, dumbfounded and incredulous at his recognition of me after years had passed and after having only engaged with him for a few minutes”.
Perhaps it is most fitting that the last word goes to Benjamin Pogrund, Mandela’s journalist friend and loyal ally in the battle to reveal to the world the injustices of apartheid. In his tribute, which appeared in the Israeli daily Haaretz, following Mandela’s passing, Pogrund reflected on the qualities that had made Mandela, both as a statesman and a human being, so very extraordinary:
He made possible South Africa’s relatively peaceful transition from apartheid to non-racism and democracy. He led the majority black population away from anger and hatred about the oppression and degradation to which white rule had subjected them and instead to acceptance of a shared society, a “rainbow nation,” as it is called.
That Nelson Mandela endured so much suffering in his life and yet emerged so totally a believer in humanity, putting out his hand to the enemy, is why he is the most admired man of our age. Amid the tributes to his greatness, I retain my own memories of his generosity.
- David Saks is a former Deputy Director of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies. He has been editor of Jewish Affairs since 1999.
