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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:'That Spells Trouble': Jews and the Communist Party of South Africa
Authors:Israel, MarkISNI
Adams, SimonISNI
Year:2000
Periodical:Journal of Southern African Studies
Volume:26
Issue:1
Period:March
Pages:145-162
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:Jews
South African Communist Party
Ethnic and Race Relations
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
Politics and Government
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/2637554
Abstract:When the National Party conquered power in South Africa in 1948, the government developed a repressive attitude towards organized opposition. White opposition was condemned as communist-controlled, atheistic, and un-South African. The existence of a disproportionate number of Jews within the visible opposition meant that the ideological architects of apartheid could fall back on antisemitic stereotypes, including those that depicted Jews as troublemakers. Moreover, leading bodies of the Jewish community maintained a policy of not commenting on political matters. There was a tendency for Jewish radicals to be written out of the official history of Jewish life in South Africa. This article argues that the historiography of South African Jewry needs to be reviewed. Drawing on a range of archival and oral accounts of political activity, including a series of interviews undertaken by one of the authors in 1988, the paper examines and explains Jewish involvement in anti-State activity in South Africa by analysing the role of Jewish radicals in the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) from the 1920s through to the 1960s. Certain factors in the South African experience acted to make it much more likely that Jews would become active in the radical opposition to racism, capitalism and apartheid. Within the ANC and the CPSA, the failure to acknowledge the ethnic background of Jewish activists was perhaps an overreaction to the virulent antisemitism of the apartheid regime. Notes, ref., sum.
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