South Africa's hate toward Israel, explained
From the Durban Conference in 2001 to the "genocide" claims at The Hague in 2024, the South African government has become the most staunchly anti-Israel voice. Ronen Dorfan embarked on a journey in a country that is whose leaders, once a symbol of courage against apartheid, use "Palestine" to cover up failures and domestic corruption.
Ronen Dorfan
Israel Hayom
Feb 9, 2024
Along the way from formal Cape Town to informal Cape Town you can see hundreds of people walking. That's the main visual difference between apartheid South Africa, which I visited in my childhood, and the present one. The grandeur and luxury, the mansions and golf courses, remained. What was added was the masses of people walking along the roads.
Do they walk because they have work, or because they don't? Unclear. According to the data, 25% of Barcelona's residents have no income at all. More than 90% of families survive on less than $200 a month. And there's also a water story to be told. Various reports show that in Barcelona there is less than one faucet for every 20 families. Most of the residents had never known life in a developed city and brought their farm animals with them, goats and chickens. And the animals also need to drink from the few faucets.
"Cry, the Beloved Country," is the name of the classic on life in South Africa published by Alan Paton in 1948. One of the iconic sentences in the book deals with arrogance and water:
"Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire." There is a small lake on the golf course, but there is one faucet for every 20 families. And the country's government, a greedy kleptocracy that has imaginarily enriched itself in 30 years of rule, is the one that goes out to war for justice far away at The Hague. It's not surprising. Between the 2001 Durban conference, which was a painful blow to Israel, and The Hague 2024, the South African government has become the world's leader in the anti-Israel camp. How did this happen?
The South African solution
Not far from the Rondebosch club and the dwellings of Barcelona, I meet Terry Crawford-Browne, one of the first to protest the outrageous corruption. Already in the 1990s, during the euphoria of Nelson Mandela's presidency, he warned that money intended for education was being stolen and that South Africa was dirtying its hands in the arms industry. His voice mattered a lot: As an international banker, he played a significant role in bringing down the apartheid regime when he was one of the initiators of the banking boycott on South Africa.
He got his sensitivity to human suffering, he says, in his childhood. He was born in the British protectorate area of Tripoli, Libya, and remembers the mob burning down the synagogues of the Jews as they fled for their lives in 1948. He also hates the State of Israel. Crawford-Browne is one of the most important BDS spokesmen in South Africa, and that's a problem for Israel. Because, unlike the current government, he is not corrupt. He knows Israel and has visited it twice as an observer at checkpoints and in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem. I ask him if he witnessed unusually cruel behavior by soldiers. He replies that the soldiers are mostly frightened.
He says the attacks on Jews that he witnessed in his childhood can be attributed to Zionist agents who wanted to bring Arab Jews to the land so that they would serve as cheap labor and cannon fodder in wars. He sees Israeli or Jewish involvement in keeping the corrupt Arab rulers in power, and even in the civil wars in Congo.
He accepts the figure of 1,400-1,200 Israeli casualties on October 7 but attributes a large part of them to the "Hannibal Protocol" in which the IDF is tasked with firing on kidnappers even at the risk of hurting the captives.
When I ask him about the raped women, he says, "I haven't seen evidence of that. It's like that ridiculous story of beheading babies, which is a complete fabrication." I note that Hamas uploaded videos to the networks in which women are led through the streets. To that he responds with a question: "Were they innocent civilians or soldiers?" If he is disgusted by the massacre, it is because he is a pacifist.
He initiated the banking boycott on South Africa "as a last resort before violence." That is the move he would like to see against Israel: freezing money transfers with the IL prefix in the global SWIFT system.
The only place where he shows any moderation is the solution. He advocates a one-state solution. By the way, this is common to both haters and lovers of Israel, simply because it was the solution here. "What will you do with 800,000 settlers in the West Bank? How will you move them?" he asks surprisingly.
I ask him if the war might not kill the idea of a single state. Israelis will not agree to a population transfer from Gaza, and perhaps by default, Gaza will get a seaport or other gateway to the world. He thinks the opposite: "Nothing is left in Gaza. 2 million people will now migrate into Israel."
Israel will never agree to that. Not only Netanyahu, but Israeli society as well, I tell him.
"Then there will be starvation and international pressure will prevail."
Q: Won't the international community simply deal with it through aid?
"Maybe the Americans. But this war is the end of the American empire. They have an election between a madman and a war criminal. Gaza will be for the US what Suez was for Britain."
Israel channels anti-globalist hopes onto itself even from bankers.
Westside FM's broadcaster Bafana Modise explains to me how pro-Palestinian preaching works at local universities. He himself studied public administration in Krugersdorp near Johannesburg and became president of the student union.
"I started organizing protests and marches to protest the economic conditions," he recalls, "and then representatives of the ANC student organization approached me. They said they would help me get messages to the right places. So I joined them. We started going through seminars on communism and Marxism. Che Guevara, Samora Machel (leader of neighboring Mozambique; ed.). I started speaking that language. Even my accent changed. I sounded like a Chinese revolutionary. And then suddenly a new narrative appeared: Palestine. We are taught that their struggle is our struggle. That our struggle will not be complete until we bring freedom to Palestine. We started demonstrating over that too. 'From the river to the sea' and all that."
He is 30 today, and in addition to his popularity as a media personality, he is also a member of the South Africa Friends of Israel. "They do it in a very clever way. They link things. They say that people came to Africa from Europe. Took the land and robbed the locals of their freedom. They let you make the connections yourself. They link different events in the history of the anti-apartheid struggle to the history of the Palestinians. If the Israeli army shoots at protesters they compare it to the Sharpeville massacre. They ostensibly are only anti-Zionist, but very quickly it comes down to Jewish money."
Modise is not a blind supporter of Israel. For example, he is critical of house demolitions. He thinks the number of casualties in the current confrontation is a tragedy that will only breed more hatred.
I ask him if he was angry at Israel, which during the Rabin and first Peres administrations supported the apartheid regime. "Yes I'm angry," he replies. "People from previous generations died from weapons that Israel supplied – but to blame Israel? Israel traded with colonialism, other countries were actual conquerors. How can you blame Israel and not Britain? France? Belgium?"
A movement that betrayed its values
Modise makes me suddenly understand an important component in South Africa's official obsession with the Palestinians. The ANC (African National Congress), South Africa's ruling party, was a liberation movement that largely betrayed its ideas. Led by Mandela, it brought democracy and took power, but gave up on an economic revolution in favor of moves of affirmative action in the civil service and "black economic empowerment."
While Mandela prevented civil war and brought stability and growth in the post-apartheid years, "black economic empowerment" was actually a cover for top government officials to grab shares in major companies, fill their pockets, and appoint their cronies to positions. The Palestinian flag it waves is largely a return to the role of a romantic liberation movement, instead of the failing and corrupt government it has become.
The link between local tensions and the Palestinian issue is also evident in Bo-Kaap, a vibrant and exciting area of Cape Town. During apartheid, the neighborhood was the "ghetto" of the Malays, Muslims mostly of Asian descent. Right after apartheid, it became popular. Among the Muslim shops, galleries, and cafes quickly appeared. Quite a bit of resemblance to London's Bethnal Green or Harlem in Manhattan, and even Jaffa.
"The original residents feel they are not wanted," says Sharon, a native who conducts private tours for tourists, "so they identify with what is happening in Palestine." How do you see this identification? In an unusual burst of creative energy. On dozens of houses, there are colorful pro-Palestinian murals. Some of them, it must be said, are magnificent. In the main street, at least, they remain "pro-Palestinian." You will not find swastikas, Star of Davids, or signs of hatred towards Jews.
But you shouldn't let the main street confuse you. The Herzlia Jewish-Zionist school canceled uniforms for a while out of fear of violence against students. Government and BDS spokespeople describe the school as an IDF training site, and this is in a country where "IDF soldier" is a synonym for baby killer, that some call to put on trial, or even revoke their citizenship. "They talk in numbers that even if every graduate of ours made Aliyah and enlisted, we wouldn't come close to them," Daniel Bloch, one of the leaders of the Jewish community in the city, tells me.
The fruit and the root
Reverend Kenneth Meshoe is probably the most consistent supporter of Israel in parliament. His party is small, but his personal influence is probably greater. He was one of the fighters against defining South Africa as a secular state in the constitution and succeeded in preventing it. Once, Mandela gave a speech in parliament and asked MPs to set an example of proper behavior. Meshoe stood up and told the legendary president that he lived in sin. After being released from prison, Mandela divorced his wife, Winnie, and lived out of wedlock with Graça Machel, the widow of Mozambique's president. Parliament fell silent.
"He accepted my words and married her," he laughs.
He meets me at his office in Alberton, not far from the airport. Jews of modest economic status once lived here. I tell him that my family members, who lived in South Africa after the war, always described the Malays as moderate people. "That's very true, but after independence, Mandela brought Arafat here. He told people that he had helped us with weapons during the struggle. Arafat took advantage of this and started coming here frequently and speaking to Muslims. And they became extremists."
And so, as the ruling party collapsed in national and local election polls – it began targeting the Cape, which is ruled relatively successfully by the Democratic Alliance. And that is one of the few areas in the country where the Muslim voice – less than 2% of South Africa's population – can be decisive.
His support for Israel is religiously motivated. "A Christian who does not love Jews is a hypocrite. You can't love the fruit and not the root," he says. He rejects apartheid rhetoric outright and was even in Israel on a delegation to investigate the matter. "I saw in hospitals Jews and Arabs and Muslims together. It's not apartheid." He also gives an example that demonstrates his grasp of what is happening in Israel: "When your president (Moshe Katsav) was put on trial, the judge, among others, was an Arab judge. That cannot happen under apartheid."
With all the love for Israel, his solution, in the end, is South African: one state from the river to the sea, and everyone has the right to vote. To a large extent, a similar solution to that proposed by Zionist-hater Crawford-Browne. Meshoe gets quite a few threats for his support of Israel, but he is not bothered. It's been like that for 20 years. "I refuse to live in fear," he says.
While waiting for the meeting, I talk to some of his office staff and ask them if it is difficult to be part of the pro-Israel minority. One of the assistants almost rebukes me for this and reminds me of the biblical story of Gideon. "Gideon had 10,000 fighters, but he sent the fainthearted away and was left with 300 brave fighters. We are Gideon's men," he tells me. Gideon is alive and breathing here.
What sound does apartheid make?
Avi, who ran the Herzlia High School, studied at the University of the Wits University in Johannesburg. Like many Jewish students, he attended lectures by a young, intriguing black leader named Nelson Mandela. It is an excellent university that has produced four Nobel laureates – Nadine Gordimer for literature; Aaron Klug for chemistry; and Sydney Brenner in physiology. Outside the university is a long line of young people standing in line. Today is registration day. All students in line are black. They come in person because of limited access to the internet, or to consult on financial aid programs.
Klaas Mokgomole, a law school graduate, works a lot at the university as community relations manager for the South African Zionist Federation. "The belief that education is still the only legitimate way out of poverty is still fervent here," he says, introducing me to a friend, a cop who is bringing his 18-year-old daughter who wants to study astrophysics. Make no mistake: The end of apartheid did change millions of lives so that people could live with human dignity and realize their dreams.
But Mokgomole does not sugarcoat reality. He shows me heartbreaking photos of homeless students. They sleep in libraries. Others go to sleep hungry. The BDS movement is also thriving here, and he himself was active in it, which almost cost him degree eligibility. "The Israeli embassy organized a recital, and my friends and I rioted and I even damaged the piano. They wanted to suspend me.
"I came from a poor family and almost lost my degree – all because of things I heard from some BDS activists. So I decided to read about Israel myself. I read writings by Jews across the spectrum: from Noam Chomsky to Alan Dershowitz. I also traveled to Israel and formed my own views."
He works for the Zionist Federation, even though he is still a member of the ANC. "The anti-Israel stuff is in the corridors of power. At the grassroots level in South Africa, we hardly talk about it," he explains how he reconciles the two.
He is also critical of his employers and feels that sometimes he fights Israel's war with one hand tied behind his back. "They hide a lot of Jewish activity. Jewish organizations send food packages to students without indicating they come from a Jewish organization. There are students here studying on Jewish scholarships demonstrating 'from the river to the sea.' And then suddenly we're organizing an olive tree planting ceremony here for peace. It seems disconnected."
Mokgomole, like Modise, believes Israel has not yet lost the war on campuses here. The two point out a very important reason why it is important for Israel to win in South Africa: to fight over the meaning of the term "apartheid." Hatred of Israel converges around a term that was actually the election slogan of a white party that took power in 1947. Therefore, it is important for them that a message comes out of South Africa in particular that there is an Israeli-Palestinian conflict with its own characteristics – but it is not apartheid.
A bullet for every Zionist bore
I catch the broadcast of the International Court of Justice's decision in the winegrowing village north of Cape Town. The event does not interest anyone here. Here Israel does not need to win any propaganda war. This is the homeland of the Afrikaners, who are sometimes called "Boers." Descendants of Dutch and French refugees persecuted Huguenots and Calvinists in Europe. Their love for Israel is rooted in the past and present. They draw a parallel between the tribulations they endured in their wanderings from Europe to Africa and the Boer War and the persecution of the Jews. And a practical matter: The area is thriving with spectacular desert agriculture, with an abundance of Israeli technologies.
They are still threatened. Julius Malema's populist EFF party, with its charismatic leadership, a Marxist antisemite who calls to arm Hamas. As for local politics, he talks about confiscating land without compensation. Even Crawford-Browne is appalled by the idea. "What will we eat if the Afrikaners are dispossessed?". The old slogan "One Boer – one bullet" got a new iteration in the form of "One Zionist – one bullet."
The Afrikaners are identified more than any with apartheid because they created it. On the other hand, they are probably more committed to the country than other whites. Black residential areas also sprouted up near their cities after apartheid, and they are in much better shape compared to other black communities – they may not be the stunning colonial estates of the winery owners, but simple housing structures with gardens. Their children also march long distances in the sun but in a nice uniform. What is a bit funny is to see black South Africans blending Xhosa, the "click language", with Afrikaans, which is basically an ancient Flemish dialect.
"God will punish South Africa for turning its back on the people of Israel," says Anton Alberts, one of the Afrikaner leaders in the Gauteng Provincial Legislature. This is their uncompromising theological stance. But from here he moves on to the practical implications. I ask him about the situation where the ANC would fall below 50% support levels and opt to form a coalition with the extremist Malema. Bad for Israel and bad for Afrikaners. He believes the president, Cyril Ramaphosa, would turn to major Opposition parties rather than the EFF, as they are mainly engaged in provocations.
In any case, he suggests that Israelis take an interest in local politics: "Our constitution allows districts to pursue independent foreign-economic policies. I believe we are close to taking Gauteng (the Johannesburg area and the mines; R"D). If we take it and already have the Cape (in a coalition with the 'Democratic Alliance'), we will control the country's economy. There will be no boycott on Israel, and we will pursue a friendly policy towards all our natural trade partners. Israel is a very beloved partner for us."
In the name of the father
Helen Maisels shows me an original copy of a rare photo. We are at her home in an upscale neighborhood near Johannesburg's cricket stadium. Stunning gardens surrounded by sophisticated barbed wires. The photo shows the leaders of the ANC, the fathers of the nation, including Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, carrying the president of the South African Zionist Federation out of the Pretoria synagogue on their shoulders.
This man was her father, Israel "Isie" Maisels, a legendary lawyer who was the lead counsel in Mandela and his men's 1956-1961 treason trial. They were acquitted of charges under the Suppression of Communism Act. A few years later he was tried again for high treason, this time convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, from which he was released after 27 years to lead the country. Without Maisels, Mandela might have reached jail half a decade earlier. The liberation movement might not have survived. Mandela named one of the groups of the Johannesburg Bar in honor of Maisels. At his funeral in the Jewish cemetery, Maisels' coffin was draped in the ANC flag.
The trial itself, by the way, took place in a Pretoria synagogue. The building was not in use, and the trial required a large hall. "Somewhat ironic for today's South Africa," I suggest.
"Thank you very much," she answers sarcastically. "Naledi Pandor, our foreign minister, who is an outspoken anti-Zionist, her father was among the accused. He owed his freedom to my father."
Q: Do you feel betrayed by how South Africa has acted toward Israel?
"Absolute disgrace."
Her father was often called the "King of the Jews" in South Africa. He headed every major Jewish organization and was on the Jewish Agency's board. Revered by the ANC, he was respected by the white government as well. And so Helen got a front-row seat to history. Mandela and Sisulu, David Ben-Gurion, and Yitzhak Rabin – they were all guests at their home. Golda Meir was a good friend of her parents.
Q: Was Mandela a nice guy?
"Yes very much. Winnie was also very beautiful and a very nice woman. But then she was brutally attacked by the regime and became a monster herself. She 'killed that boy'." She refers to Winnie Mandela's murder charge at the end of apartheid.
She also saw the development of the ANC's relations with Jews and Zionists after the end of apartheid from up close. "When Mandela got out of jail, he called my dad and said, 'I understand the community is angry with me because we took weapons from the PLO.' 'You took weapons from whoever you could. I understand,' he replied. He was always practical, and set up a meeting between him and the Jewish community."
The advice to Mandela, by the way, resembled his advice to Israel. Rabin asked Isie if Israel should enter into an arms deal with the apartheid regime. His answer was: "You don't abandon friends".
She has something to offer Israel. "In the Hague context, when Mandela and Sisulu came to my father, he told them: 'If we conduct the trial emotionally – we'll lose, and you'll all go to jail. If I conduct the trial on points of law – we have a chance. And they agreed."
She feels a deep disgust also from some prominent Jewish anti-apartheid opponents. One of them is Ronnie Kasrils, who even served as South Africa's intelligence minister. He praised Hamas's operational conduct on Oct. 7 and denied that there were rape and baby killings. He believes uniformed personnel are legitimate targets.
"He's an idiot," she says. "He caused the deaths of dozens of people during an idiotic invasion of Transkei he organized during the anti-apartheid struggle. Many Jews who opposed apartheid renounced their Judaism. My father used to tell them, 'Where do you think the identification with the weak comes from? From where does the social sensitivity come from, if not from the pogroms we went through in Lithuania?'"
Q: As long as Mandela was alive, relations with the Jews were fine.
"Yes. Everything became chaotic during President Jacob Zuma's tenure."
Q: There were so many Jews in the struggle against apartheid. Why did they abandon us?
"My father had to fight to include Helen Suzman in the Apartheid Museum [Suzman was a lone parliamentarian in the anti-apartheid camp]. She no longer suits them now because she was a liberal white. Even when it comes to Joe Slovo (a Jewish communist leader), the brightest of the Jews who fought against the regime, they are trying to erase his memory. This is the new fascism. The fascism of the woke. They want to erase all the Jewish help they got from history."
South Africa's problems are its own, but it seems here is exactly where the Palestinian issue comes into play. Israel is not struggling here against a hostile public. There is no troubling European-style antisemitism here. It is fighting against the ANC: What was once a courageous liberation movement had become a rotten government that betrayed its people and adopted the Palestinian struggle as a substitute.
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