Mandela Had Help Fighting Apartheid

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Nelson Mandela, now almost 95 years old and in perilous health, is truly one of the great men of our time. He has been a source of inspiration to people around the world.

Mandela had joined the African National Congress (ANC), already 32 years in existence, in 1944 and would eventually become its leader. He was imprisoned by the South African apartheid regime for 27 years for leading the struggle against white minority rule. Released in 1990, four years later he became the first black president of South Africa.

Less well-known is the part played by some Jewish South Africans, many of them Communists, in the anti-apartheid movement. Among the white population, Jews were disproportionately involved in the struggle, many times greater than one would expect for a community that never formed much more than three per cent of the white population.

Mandela acknowledged this in his 1994 autobiography Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, writing that in his experience, he had "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 most prominent Jewish member in the ANC was Joe Slovo, who rose to occupy key positions within both the Communist Party and within the ANC's armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), founded in 1961. He was the first white to be elected to the national executive of the ANC.

After the transition to democracy in 1994, he served as minister of housing under President Mandela. His wife Ruth First, murdered while in exile in 1982, was also an active member of the resistance to the South African regime.

"When future generations look back on the 1994 breakthrough," said Nelson Mandela, speaking at Slovo's funeral in 1995, "they will be justified in saying: Uncle Joe was central in making it happen."

Two other opponents of apartheid were Arthur Goldreich and Harold Wolpe. After the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, in which 69 Black South Africans were killed, Goldreich, who had fought in Israel's War of Independence in 1948, and Wolpe, a lawyer, bought Liliesleaf Farm, near Johannesburg, in 1961.

It became an operations centre for Umkhonto we Sizwe. Goldreich passed on to Mandela and others the military expertise he had gained more than a decade earlier in Israel. As Mandela later recalled, "He was knowledgeable about guerrilla warfare and helped fill in many gaps in my understanding."

On July 11, 1963, security police raided the farm and captured 19 members of the underground, charging them with sabotage. All of the white activists arrested in the raid or shortly thereafter were Jews with Communist affiliations. Of these, only Lionel Bernstein and Denis Goldberg actually stood trial in the end.

In October 1963 Nelson Mandela joined Bernstein, Goldberg and seven others accused of sabotage in what became known as the Rivonia Trial, which stirred anti-Semitic responses. Criminal Investigation Chief R. J. van den Bergh made reference to the raid in a speech in which he stated that foes of apartheid might be "instruments of Jews."

On June 11, 1964 Nelson Mandela and seven others, including Goldberg, were convicted and the next day they were sentenced to life imprisonment. Goldberg was sent to Pretoria Prison because he was white while the others went to Robben Island. Bernstein was acquitted for lack of evidence.

Also radicalized by the Sharpeville massacre was Ronnie Kasrils, who was a founding member of Umkhonto we Sizwe and was appointed its Chief of Intelligence in 1983. He held various cabinet positions in the post-apartheid governments of Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki between 1994 and 2008.

During the mid-1960s, some 30 white anti-apartheid activists served prison sentences ranging from three years to life on account of their underground political activities. Twelve of these were Jewish.

Yes, there were those in the Jewish community who condoned the system of racial segregation, or looked the other way, though few voted for the Afrikaner-based National Party, the architect of apartheid, which took power after 1948.

Jews had to tread warily in a country governed by people who looked askance at them. The governing party was home to many anti-Semites who had admired Hitler and the Nazis during World War II.

Still, the best-known leaders of the opposition in the South African parliament were Jewish, including Harry Schwarz, who had been a defence counsel at the Rivonia trial, and Helen Suzman, who from 1961 to 1974 was the sole elected representative of the Progressive Party.

She was regularly jeered in the House of Assembly with taunts such as "Go back to Israel." Schwartz became South Africa's ambassador to the United States when apartheid was dismantled.

Within the white population of South Africa, none had a record as good as that of the Jewish community.