Let’s face it: by the end of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process, white South Africans had largely been let off the hook — apart from those named and shamed as perpetrators of gross human-rights violations. The reasons lay in the realpolitik of the democratic transition. To stabilise a new and insecure non-racial project, the newly elected government made concerted efforts to keep whites on board and to sustain a government of national unity.
The TRC report, however, noted not only “acts of commission” but “acts of omission” by many ordinary South Africans — white South Africans in particular — who had been complicit with apartheid: “The focus on the outrageous has drawn the nation’s attention away from the commonplace violations. The result is that ordinary South Africans do not see themselves as represented by those the commissions define as perpetrators, failing to recognise ‘the little perpetrator’ in all of us.”
White South Africans were complicit with apartheid simply by inhabiting the system as people classified white. This made them beneficiaries of the opportunities and privileges attaching to that classification — even if uncomfortably or unhappily so.
Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris, speaking on behalf of the South African Board of Deputies during the TRC’s faith hearings, echoed this finding: “The Jewish community did not initiate apartheid. Many in the Jewish community did not agree with apartheid. Almost everyone in the Jewish community had a kind of awkward tension about apartheid. But most members of the Jewish community benefited in one way or another from apartheid — The primary failure had been one of inactivity and silence.”
Unfortunately, this is not what most Jews remember about Harris’s submission. Either it passed them by altogether, or they remember only the row ignited by the next thing Harris said. Asked what he thought about a wealth tax on whites, Harris assented. As he recounted later: “I personally have always said, living in Johannesburg where so many white-owned houses have swimming pools and there is not even one public swimming pool in Alexandra, that the situation is obscene and immoral.”
The moment Harris left the faith hearings, Jewish opposition to the wealth tax was vocal; it eclipsed the general substance of his submission. As a result, the Jewish community missed the opportunity to hear and affirm Harris’s acknowledgement of Jewish complicity with apartheid (as an instance of white complicity more widely), and the need for apology and compensation.
Today we have another opportunity to revisit that question about our past — an opportunity, hopefully, to be less defensive, more open and honest. It is also an opportunity to acknowledge the legacy of this past in the present.
Apartheid produced a highly unequal society; the transition to democracy has produced what some measures identify as the most unequal society in the world. This is one of the intensely uncomfortable paradoxes of political freedom in this country.
We are at risk of being complicit, once again, with a situation that is ethically intolerable — “obscene”, as Harris put it. This is not a situation of our individual or communal making, not a situation that we have chosen or preferred, but it is a situation that shapes our collective lives nevertheless. So what can and should be done about it within the Jewish community?
The first thing we should do is to accept that the problem of dire inequality is our problem, rather than to turn away defensively. Second, we need to debate possible ways of intervening. A wealth tax is but one possibility, and I suspect this is not the preferred option here. But there are other ways of making a material contribution to compensate for our histories of material advantage.
There are many NGOs making valiant efforts to tackle inequalities in access to education, health, housing and justice. Indeed, thousands of NGOs are in dire straits, having lost foreign and philanthropic funding since 1994. They remain critical in redistributing opportunities and resources to the social and economic margins.
So let’s not get bogged down in the details of a wealth tax. The key challenge I want to put is to shift a mindset from one of defensiveness and denial (not my problem, not my responsibility) to one that acknowledges our inevitable — if reluctant — complicity with a past, and now a present, that is ethically indefensible.
It is our problem because it derives from the benefits we gained under apartheid. It is our problem because inequality is not only about poverty but also about increasing relative wealth — and the Jewish community is well represented in the top 10% that earns 60% of all income in South Africa. And it is our problem because, if not addressed, it will overwhelm all of us.
Deborah Posel is a professor of sociology and director of the Institute for Humanities in Africa at UCT. This is an edited version of a talk given at the 2011 Cape Jewish Board of Deputies’ “TransformNation” conference.