Just as relations between members of the fragile Government of National Unity (GNU) could not be more tense, news broke — via the Good Party’s Brett Herron — of the clandestine joint Democratic Alliance (DA) and Patriotic Alliance (PA) delegation visit to Israel. The same country that the South African government has taken to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), where preliminary findings showed that Israel’s military action in Gaza can plausibly constitute acts of genocide. The court also found that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories is illegal and must be dismantled according to international law.
But is this visit out of sync with the values of the DA — and now the PA — and if not, how are we to contextualise the continuity of the parties’ pro-Israel/Western orientation?
Milton Shain, in his study on antisemitism in South Africa, highlights how during the 1930s, the Aliens Act (1937) was passed to restrict Jewish immigration amid fears of “Semitic over-representation” in commerce and the professions. “After the war, Malan, having no further use for anti-Semitic rhetoric and sensing its utilisation to be counter-productive, quickly reached a modus vivendi with the Jewish community.”
So, when the vote was extended to Jews by the National Party, it was not just a demographic consideration but a strategic manoeuvre to consolidate white power and neutralise dissent within white society. It also helped to co-opt economically influential minorities. This had an effect that remains imprinted on our political landscape today: that of Jewishness being securely white and South African.
The extension of privilege came at a cost — but one that the increasing Jewish immigrant community was prepared to pay — the cost of accepting the logic of exclusion. In other words, they accepted the supremacy of white rule.
Gideon Shimoni, in Community and Conscience: The Jews in Apartheid South Africa (2003), explains the utilitarian value of having Jews classified as white South Africans:
“Despite being socially suspect, Jews were fully enfranchised as whites in terms of political rights… By the time apartheid laws were passed in the 1950s, Jews were firmly incorporated into the white political class.”
Numerous studies on the creation of Jewish South African identity speak to the parallel use of Jews by the Nats and the acquiescence — and active complicity — of these "new whites" in the apartheid regime. Israel sold billions in arms to the apartheid regime, including missile boats, radar systems, and small arms. In 1975, Israel and South Africa signed secret military agreements, and by 1979, they were jointly developing nuclear-capable missiles. Moreover, numerous declassified reports point to Israeli assistance in South Africa’s nuclear weapons programme.
By being included in the apartheid definition of ''white'' and afforded its full privileges, the Jewish community’s political voting patterns changed — from traditional support for the United Party and smaller progressive parties to increasing support for the National Party. Data from suburbs in urban constituencies — such as Hillbrow, Berea, and Sea Point — which had significant Jewish populations, show how the NP made substantial gains.
This historical context is important because it highlights the continuity of a strategy premised on a shared ''white/Western'' identity between conservative white South Africans and the majority of the Jewish South African population, who are largely Zionist in orientation. Indeed, the moral cost of this alliance — still alive and well today — was addressed by Jewish activists Dennis Goldberg and Joe Slovo, both of whom sacrificed being part of a racialised Jewish community to fight for the principles of human equality.
In retrospect, we can say that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) offered a fig leaf of moral clarity, allowing perpetrators to simply verbalise their regret over apartheid and its deep-seated violence against Black South Africans. It helped assuage the consciences of apartheid’s beneficiaries without demanding redress for their complicity.
Jewish institutions like the South African Jewish Board of Deputies have always maintained a stance of political ''neutrality'' while pushing for greater communal power for Jews within the white bloc. By keeping their political distance from the human rights abuses of apartheid, they could simultaneously use the history of the Holocaust to deflect criticism of their complicity.
So when the DA — and now the PA — choose to go to Israel in 2025, as the number of civilians murdered by Israel reaches over 50 000, including more than 250 journalists, it is not out of keeping with their historical legacy. Indeed, the most recent “fact-finding” mission follows that of DA leader John Steenhuisen, who visited Israel in 2021. Then, too, his party justified the trip by claiming it was engaging with “both sides” — though no meetings with Palestinian leadership were documented.
Rainbow Nation discourse must be shunned for what it is — a Disney caricature of a “happily ever after” for those who live in a bubble of privilege and are trying desperately to hang on to it, even if it means doing so at the expense of human rights for all.
Mariam Jooma Çarıkçı is a researcher with the Media Review Network and the author of Kurdistan: Achievable reality or political mirage? (2013).
