THE local election results have not pleased King Goodwill Zwelithini. Reflecting on ANC losses, the Zulu monarch told a gathering at a recent reed dance ceremony that the ruling party should step aside and let him take over. He could do the job, he said. God had, after all, given him the powers to lead.

“As I am talking,” he continued, “the capital city of South Africa is governed by whites‚ which is a sign that the country is gone. The economic base [Johannesburg] has been taken over by whites. If politicians had listened to me‚ the election results would not be like this.”

That particular elevator, you could say, did not go all the way to the top. But these were not uncommon sentiments. Andile Mngxitama, the Black First Land First leader, has in recent days accused whites in general of spiriting away billions of rands from the treasury and the “racist white DA”, in particular, of only serving white interests in the municipalities they control. 

Similarly, Julius Malema, the Economic Freedom Fighters leader, has suggested that whites have no claim to land in South Africa. He reportedly told an election rally in June, “If we say that South Africa belongs to whites too it means we are defeating what our forefathers were fighting for.” 

More broadly, Malema has singled out white monopoly capital as a principal target in his rhetoric. White monopoly capital had “captured” finance ministers, it controlled the ruling party, the DA and other opposition parties, and millions of South Africans were unemployed as a result of its influence and practices.

It’s a refrain that has been picked up by the ruling party. Prior to the drubbing they received in Nelson Mandela Bay, ANC councillors spoke of their resilience while “under attack from the white monopoly capital represented by the DA”. Jacob Zuma’s supporters blame white monopoly capital for the economic crisis. The finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, was “the darling of white monopoly capital”, according to the president’s son, Edward Zuma.

And so, it would appear, the country has a “White Problem” — similar, perhaps, to the “Jewish Problem” of the 1930s and 1940s.

Simply put, this was the theme unpacked by Milton Shain in a recent Cape Town Press luncheon. Professor emeritus of historical studies at the University of Cape Town and the former director of the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Research, Shain had recently been awarded the 2016 Recht Malan literary prize for A Perfect Storm; Antisemitism in South Africa 1930-1948 (Jonathan Ball).

The judges described the work as “history at its most compulsively readable”, and noted, “In a time when violent xenophobia regularly rears its ugly head across the country, the continent and the globe, this marvellous book is a timely reminder of what can happen when politicians in pursuit of power demonise a vulnerable group.”

Shain’s address opened with a remark from a colleague, uttered back in 1994: “Now we are all Jews.”

“It was quite a profound statement,” Shain said. “But what did he actually mean? And would it pose a problem to be Jewish? 

“Of course, what that scholar meant was that whites are now the minority in a new and democratic South Africa. For the first time, they will confront politics as a minority and not as a privileged caste of the old order. But does this inevitably mean that one has a problem?”

* * * * *

MUCH of the first half of Shain’s address dealt with the dynamics of the pre-war “Jewish Question” — an issue explored more fully in his book.

“Firstly,” he said, “for any form of xenophobia, any form of prejudice, you have to a target group, and you have to have the long maturation of a hostile stereotype.”

The South African anti-Jewish stereotype harked back to the late 19th century. It took on several forms, from the rural and rather lowly smous, or hawker, to the vulgar “Hoggenheimer” caricature of a greedy urban financier, via that of the urban huckster. 

With the First World War, the stereotype was further embellished — the Jew was also tarnished as a cowardly shirker. Following events in Russia in 1917, the Jew was now, paradoxically, seen as the radical Bolshevik revolutionary as well as the cosmopolitan arch-capitalist.

“By the 1920s, you had the idea of the Jew as unassimilable, a threat to the make-up of, and a distinct presence which deviated from the mainstream. He was an unassimilable minority, not of the right culture, with different ways of doing things and inherently so.”

In 1930, the then interior minister, DF Malan, introduced the Quota Act, which effectively halted East European Jewish immigration. Such legislation was by no means unique to South Africa. It was widely supported by all parties. 

By now, attitudes towards the Jews were hardening, aggravated by several factors.

“Firstly, there was the poor white problem and the Great Depression. One in five whites, mainly Afrikaners, lived below the poverty line, according to the Carnegie Commission’s report, of 1932. So you have the awkward set up of poverty which always comes into xenophobia and prejudice.”

Then, Shain said, there was domestic political instability. The “Pact” government — an uneasy coalition between the Labour Party and the National Party formed for the 1924 general election — came to an end with the 1933 elections, which ushered in another coalition, followed by the merger in 1934 of Jan Smuts’s South African Party and Barry Hertzog’s National Party to form the United Party. 

Malan opposed the merger and, along with other hard-line Afrikaner nationalists, went on to form the Gesuiwerde Nasionale Party, or Purified National Party, which eventually came to power in 1948.

Then there was the rise of the radical rightwing, Shain said. “People like Louis Weichardt’s Greyshirts. These people were out and out fascists. They aped the Nazi method. They identified with it, and they put pressure on and influenced the mainstream right wing, Malan’s party.”

The Greyshirts also influenced the United Party government about the “Jewish Question”. Though hardly popular — they fared miserably at the polls — they were much like the tail that wagged the dog; it was through their activity that a culture of antisemitism moved to the political centre. 

And so, in 1937, the Aliens Act was introduced, which curtailed Jewish immigration just as it was increasing due to antisemitic repression in Nazi Germany. 

In terms of the Act, selection panels would screen potential immigrants coming to South African from outside of the British Empire or Ireland to determine their “assimilability” or, in the case of Jews, their “unassimilability”. Previous legislation had been aimed at East European Jews; this act stopped West European Jews as well.

Significantly, at this time, there was also a crude attempt to fashion a whites only national identity, a “South Africanism”, if you will — one that doesn’t include the unassimilable Jew. 

“They were somehow distinct and innately different. In fact, here one sees a presaging of ethnic thinking with apartheid. Already, in the 1930s, this conflation with culture, with some deep ethnic difference…”

An exclusivist nationalism was also on the rise. 

“The Germans call it a völkische nationalism, but here the term was used for the mobilisation of the völk on ethnic grounds. You can’t become a member of the völk, you’re born into the völk. As South Africans, we all know what that means. An English speaker couldn’t become part of the Afrikaner volk and that became an important motor during this period of hostility.”

The antisemitism had dissipated by 1948. Shain pointed out that the Jewish Question,  which had loomed large in campaigning for the 1938 general elections, was “hardly there” ten years later.

“Malan made an about turn. He’d always said he wasn’t antisemitic, although very often he’d join in the [anti-Jewish] chorus in a most venomous way. But, by the late 1940s, he didn’t feel comfortable with antisemitism, and he eventually goes to Israel as the first head of state to do so.”

More surprisingly, Malan would go on to write the preface to Chief Rabbi Israel Abrahams’s The Birth of a Community, a history of the Jews in South Africa.

“[In it] Malan talks about the Jews’ wonderful ability to survive through the ages. ‘Unassimilable’, which had previously been a curse, suddenly becomes a wonderful thing which the Afrikaners can emulate in this now decolonising continent.

“Of course, the real reason for this end of the Jewish Question was that there was no prospect of Jews coming in to South Africa after the war. So many had been murdered in Europe. Those that survived could go to Palestine and Israel and, more importantly, the National Party had captured the political kingdom.

“This meant the economic kingdom would follow and the Jews would no longer be seen as thwarting Afrikaner economic advancement.”

* * * * * 

FAST-forward, then, to the new South Africa, and its inclusive constitution — as opposed to the Nationalists’ exclusivist agenda. The Rainbow Nation, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu envisaged it, celebrated diversity and recognised multi-culturalism. It valued a unity in diversity.

The country also had a long history of struggle against racism, Shain said. 

“And with that struggle comes a hostility for any form of racism, including antisemitism. It is not a climate in which one can be classically antisemitic. It simply doesn’t stand up. Just like Penny Sparrow, we know what happened to her. You can’t go round with classical anti-Jewish comments in the country.”

Coupled with that were the country’s Chapter Nine institutions, which further acted to safeguard democratic principles and civil rights.

“Having said that,” Shain said, “we’ve all seen disturbing signs. But they’re not specifically ‘Jewish’, and this is where it’s interesting, what my colleague said in 1994, ‘Now we are all Jews.’ Because, suddenly, we’ve seen signs that the minorities, and certainly the white minority, at some level, have a sense of alienation and concern. 

“It’s interesting to think about those points I’ve made about the 1930s and 1940s and see if they exist today, in a different form, in which the whites, as a group would be potentially targeted.”

Shain pointed out he was not alone in thinking this, that former president FW de Klerk, had spoken about “disturbing signs” for South African minorities when he recently opened his Centre for Unity in Diversity. 

As De Klerk had put it, “We have to face the unpalatable fact that our present government has adopted policies that are consciously directed toward harming the core interests of a section of the South African population according to their race.”

Comparing events of the 1930s to those of the present, Shain said, “I pointed out how you need a hostile stereotype. You’ve got to have a target, you’ve got to know who it is, and it’s got to be negative. There can be no doubt that we’ve seen, for quite a while now, the stereotyping of specifically whites. For example, this talk of white monopoly capital. Not the system — monopoly capitalism — but white monopoly capital. 

“You get the notion that whites are racists, or inherently racist; the idea that whites have not atoned for the sins of the past.

“By the way, all these things might have a kernel of truth, just like in Weimar Germany, in the 1920s, you could demonstrate that Jews were upwardly mobile, or disproportionately involved in journalism or retail.

“But the reality is that it is dangerous if you persist in talking about white monopoly capital, whites not atoning for their sins, all the land being stolen from the blacks, wealth being derived from black exploitation, the country owned and dominated by whites, whites responsible for unemployment, inequality, and poverty. Whites — colonialists.”

These were ideas, Shain said, that “resonate”.

There was no doubt, he stressed, that whites were “sitting on top of the pile”. No-one could deny that.

“But that message can be dangerous, it can be undermining, in a fragile society. Because you’ve found a target. It’s a small minority. And one’s got to be very very careful.

“One has to address inequity, no-one’s questioning that. But it’s the way, the language, the discourse, which is so dangerous, and resonates so much with the anti-Jewish stereotype in the 1930s. It’s different in exact content, but nevertheless it’s a target.”

Equally, no-one could deny the country’s economic problems. The political fragility would, Shain said, be with us for some time.

“And then there’s also a grappling with trying to forge a South Africanism. We’re still struggling to have an inclusive sense of what it means to be a South African, but within that there’s a strain of majoritarianism which is coming out and some disturbing signs — mainly at times from Julius Malema — of a racial nationalism.”

He pointed to ANC campaign rallies in the run up to the local elections. The ruling party, he said, was fast losing its image as a “real umbrella party” and was shedding its minorities “visibly — in photographs and so forth”, and it seemed as if the organisation was now being driven by racial nationalism.

“Now, that is contrary to its fundamental principles. But this racial nationalism is creeping in, and certainly from this Malema side, on the extreme end, it does exist.

“So, putting it very simply, if you look at those facts, if you look at the way in which Jews were targeted in the 1930s, there is the potential for a ‘White Problem’ today.” 

Shain cautioned that the country could be far from such a situation, and he didn’t want to appear alarmist, “but as former president De Klerk put the other day, almost every one of the constitutional provisions relating to cultural and language rights has been ignored or diluted”.

“Yes, we do have a problem. We know we need inclusive growth. We know that the whites are on top of the pile for historic reasons. But using that discourse of whites with everything [that’s wrong], I believe, can be dangerous.”