The Roots of Antisemitism in South Africa (Reconsiderations in Southern African History)

Although South Africa is universally regarded as a metaphor for racism and bigotry, there has been surprisingly little scholarly focus on antisemitism in that society. Historians of South African Jewry have depicted antisemitism in the 1930s and early 1940s as an essentially alien phenomenon, a product of Nazi propaganda at a time of great social and economic trauma. Milton Shain argues that antisemitism was an important element in South African society long befor 1930. Using previously unmined sources, such as novels, plays, caricatures, and even jokes, he demonstrates that the roots of anti-Jewish outbursts of the 1930s and early 1940s are to be found in a widely shared negative stereotype of the Jew that had evolved from the late ninteenth century. Milton Shaun is Senior Lecturer in Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University of Cape Town. He is the author of Jewry and Cape Society: The Origins and Activities of the Jewish Board of Deputies for the Cape Colony. Deals with attitudes of the white population of South Africa towards Jews between 1885-1940. Contends that antisemitism in South Africa in that period did not come from Europe, nor was it a result of Nazi propaganda. White South Africa had anti-Jewish stereotypes of its own. Popular aversion was directed primarily against the Eastern European immigrant, who was depicted as a dirty peddler, shunning menial work and trying to outwit farmers and city workers. Later, this image was supplemented by stereotypes of cosmopolitan financiers, and was characterized by a sense of "otherness" on both the physical and cultural levels; in a later period Jews were cast in an essentially racial mold. The 1930s added to this kind of antisemitism a new, programmatic one, whose exponents were the extremist Malan wing of the National Party and some extremist organizations. In the 1940s-50s antisemitism in South Africa subsided; it never played a significant role in the country's inner life and politics. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism) Argues that anti-Semitism was an important element in South African society before 1930. Using novels, plays, caricatures and jokes, this work demonstrates that the anti-Jewish outbursts of the 1930s and early 1940s evolved from a negative stereotype of the Jew in the late 19th century.