Milton Shain
Antisemitism in South Africa: A Perfect Storm, 1930-1948
Summary
South Africa’s ‘Jewish Question’ is examined within the context of the Great Depression, socioeconomic and political instability, ‘Poor Whiteism’, the influx of German-Jewish refugees, Jewish upward mobility, the ‘subversive’ Jewish left, and the rise of Volkisch Afrikaner nationalism and the fascist radical right.
Milton Shain
Milton Shain is emeritus professor of historical studies at the University of Cape Town. He has written, co-authored, and co-edited over a dozen books on South African Jewish history, South African politics, and the history of antisemitism, including The Roots of Antisemitism in South Africa (1994), Antisemitism (1998); The Jews in South Africa: An Illustrated History, co-authored with Richard Mendelsohn (2008); A Perfect Storm: Antisemitism in South Africa, 1930–1948 (2015), and Holocaust Scholarship: Personal Trajectories and Professional Interpretations, co-edited with Christopher Browning, Susannah Heschel, and Michael Marrus (2015). In 2014 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa. Milton’s latest book, Fascists, Fabricators and Fantasists: Antisemitism in South Africa from 1948 to the Present (2023), is the final volume in his trilogy on the history of antisemitism in South Africa.
Yes, Shirley, they had a connection to Europe. Nordic stock was the notion they used. Aryan came up occasionally, but the notion was Nordic. And they certainly thought in racial categories. And of course, looking at the Jew as a race apart, in some ways presaged notions of separate development, different ethnic groups. The Jews were an ethnic group and a race. And the documents showed, if you saw some immigration forms, they spoke about groups, including Hebrews as a group.
The Dutch Reformed Church, it’s a good question because that was another arm of Afrikaner nationalism. It was the National Party at Prayer, as someone said. And it drove an agenda, a political agenda. And within it, there were many voices that were opposed to immigration. Its periodical, made this quite clear. And I’m going to have more to say on that on Thursday. But the Dutch Reformed Church, the Broederbond, and these arms like the , the Federation of Afrikaner Culture and other groups are all part of a matrix that goes into the making of Afrikaner nationalism. It wasn’t just there, it had to be mobilised, and didn’t have to go the way it went. But the so-called ethnic entrepreneurs did very well, including the businesses, the Afrikaans business, like Sand Lam and so forth. And they also did a lot to uplift the poor White Afrikaner with the and other organisations to help Afrikaners in the city.
The Jews that came to South Africa settled in urban areas and in the small towns in the countryside. The latter learnt Afrikaans very often as a new language and a first language in South Africa, in that sense. But they soon began to move to the cities. They soon realised that English was the language of commerce. Afrikaners had to learn English, so that became the dominant language for the new immigrants. But many still were called , sort of Afrikaans Dutch Jews. And they spoke Afrikaans comfortably. But that increasingly died out as urbanisation takes hold and the move to this large cities and commerce. And most Jews moved into professions and into commerce. And so English became their language. And politically, they supported Jan Smuts as well. The United Party was their party at first. Smuts was seen as a great friend of the Jews and a great friend of the incipient Jewish state.