Welcome to DanaKaplan.com

More than three years after the historic 1994 election in South Africa which brought Nelson Mandela to power, the country is in the process of undergoing a process of slow but radical transformation. Every aspect of South African society is being tested. Not only has Apartheid been dismantled, but government policy on housing, health, education, welfare, industrial relations, labor, employment, prisons, energy, transport, business, broadcasting, water and sanitation has been and is being re-evaluated with the intent of instituting change. As Anton Harber, Editor of the Mail & Guardian – perhaps South Africa’s most prestigious weekly newspaper, writes: “Most significant…was not the successes and failures, but the fact that every individual and every institution had to grapple with change and confront their most deeply rooted beliefs and habits.”

For South African Jews, the transformation has been quite traumatic. Used to a quiet life of “false” security and stability under Apartheid, many have had great difficulty in adjusting psychologically to the social changes taking place around them. But accepting blacks and equal has been the least problematic aspect of the transformation. Most Jews avoided overt racism even at the height of the Apartheid horror, and so it has not required a great leap to the rhetoric required in a non-discriminatory, social democratic society.

What has been most alarming is some of the negative consequences of the sweeping economic and social changes. Affirmative action has now been accelerated, giving preference to previously disadvantaged groups, especially black people, in a wide range of government and even private business positions – a policy that is justifiable on the grounds that blacks were discriminated against in education and employment by the Nationalist government since 1948. Unemployment is officially thirty-three percent, but the Reserve Bank has estimated formal unemployment at more than forty percent. Furthermore, according to a new study done by University of Durban-Westville researchers, there are seven million squatters in South Africa.

Although most Jews understand the circumstances surrounding the affirmative action policy, the resulting pressure on whites encourages young people to leave the country, and their parents to encourage this emigration. While this economic pressure applies to all whites, Jews, who are more likely to own their own businesses than other groups and thus may be less likely to be negatively affected, may be in a relatively good position. Nonetheless, the percentage of Jews leaving is still the highest.

A recent front-page article in The Sunday Independent, another prestigious South African weekly, described the flood of emigration after the King David School in Linksfield, Johannesburg, finished the school year: “The Board of Jewish Education’s official figure for pupils leaving the two Johannesburg day schools to emigrate is seventy-seven. But the consensus from the emigrant families who spoke to The Sunday Independent is that the figure is much higher.” The newspaper described how many of the families had been subjected to muggings, break-ins, attempted murder and other acts of violence. One woman stated that she was watching television when machine-gun fire disturbed her: “Then the lights went out and before locking myself in my bathroom and pushing the panic button, I peered out the window to see eight men armed with machine guns in my garden trying to get into the house.”

All South Africans, and especially whites, fear crime and violence more than anything else. And, according to the World Health Organization, rising rates of violent crime has made South Africa the most murderous country in the world. The murder rate of 53.5 people for every 100,000 is more than five times that of the United States. To give some concrete idea of how prevalent crime is, an armed robber occurs at an average of every five minutes, and a burglary every three minutes. A murder occurs every twenty-nine minutes.

Car hijacking, especially in Johannesburg, has become common. Hijackers approach a car, usually an expensive one and mostly at a red traffic light. They force the driver to relinquish the car, usually by gun-point. In the more fortunate cases, the hijackers drive away with the car, leaving the driver unharmed. In other situations, they will shoot the driver, usually without provocation. About 17,000 such hijackings were reported in 1995, the last year for which data is available, and thirty-six people were murdered during hijackings. The majority of these murders occurred in Johannesburg.

The effect of these hijacking murders, as well as some highly publicized break-in murder in affluent white suburbs, has been to produce paranoia and renewed hysteria in many white homes. Most Johannesburg houses have barbed wire and even electrified fences, and large guard dogs and private armed patrol companies are common. Some neighborhoods are now petitioning the city to allow them to wall off their area and post a twenty four-hour guard at a single entry and exit point.

Nicholas Leonsins’ story is typical in many was. He drove home in his Pajero 4x4 vehicle at about 8:30 pm. Leaving the engine running, he went to open the padlock of his gates. When he turned around to return to his car, there was a man hiding behind one of the columns. The man told Leonsins to hand over the keys of the car. Leonsins states: “I gave them to him and started to run up the driveway, but halfway I either tripped or was tripped.” As Leonsins lay on the driveway, a hijacker fired one shot at him at almost point-blank range. Fortunately for Leonsins, he had already started to roll away. The bullet only scraped the back of his neck and the top of his skull. With blood streaming down his back, he hid in nearby bushes. What makes the story unusual is that the hijackers failed to kill the driver, and that Leonsins was a subscriber to a private security company, Netstar. Netstar had placed a tracking device in the car and, within minutes, a helicopter and security car was following the stolen vehicle. About ninety minutes later, the Pajero was sitting in the driveway of a white Witbank resident. The number plates had been changed. Leonsins is horrified that the police have so far been unable to charge the Witbank resident or to find the hijackers. Because of his experience, he no longer expects the police to protect him or his family, so has employed a private security guard to guard his gate twenty-four hours a day. Leonsins feels violated and blames the government. In addition, his aunt was murdered in her home two years before and a cousin was recently hijacked at gunpoint.

Even the families of the rich and famous are victims. The father of Cape T9own’s Olympic Bid chief, Chris Ball, died after being attacked in his Johannesburg home. Intruders broke into the Ball’s home and tied up the elderly couple, Clifford, eighty-eight, and Cynthia, eighty-two. They stuffed a gag into Clifford’s mouth and he choked to death.

But the rich can afford to hire guard and take other security precautions. The poor and the elderly are, as usual, the most vulnerable. This includes a large number of elderly Jews. The situation is particularly serious and widespread since many of the Jewish elderly have children who have emigrated and may have little contact with their parents. The most recent sociodemographic study, conducted by Professor Allie A. Dubb, has indicated that the percentage of Jews over the age of seventy-five has doubled between 1970 and 1990. The emigration of so many of those aged twenty-five to forty has had an enormous negative impact on the economic and psychological well0-being of the parents, who are now senior citizens. Many of the Jewish elderly live in run-down apartment blocks in the run-down and dangerous neighborhoods in what used to be vibrant Jewish areas, such as Hill Brow and Jobber Park in Johannesburg. Today these areas are dangerous, and the elderly are easy prey for robbers, muggers, and petty thieves. Even the social workers who try to provide services for them are at risk. Recently, two mini-vans sent to shuttle the Jewish elderly to doctors’ appointments and social visits were hijacked. Jewish communal agency volunteers now have to use their own cars for deliveries to the Johannesburg Jewish elderly in these areas.

While the elderly may be most at risk, even diplomats are not immune. Lebanon’s Ambassador, Charbel Stephan, was hand-cuffed and roughed up by thugs at his residence in Houghton, an elite suburb of Johannesburg. In Durban, a Greek diplomat was car hijacked at gunpoint and his car was stolen.

As one observer phrased it, crime is acting as a “grim social leveler in the New South Africa.” This refers to the fact that, during the Apartheid years, most whites lived in well-protected and generally safe segregated neighborhoods. Black presence was controlled, or better yet, restricted. Black townships were, however, not protected by the police to nearly the same degree – with the consequence that poor, innocent blacks suffered as the primary victims of black criminals. In the New South Africa, police are now accountable to all citizens and are, therefore, trying to protect black township dwellers from mobsters and hoodlums. Since there are no longer any pass laws or other restrictions on black presence in formerly all-white areas, it is now easier – and more profitable – for black criminals to prey on rich whites, as well as poor blacks. The result is white panic. And the Jews are by far the most panic-stricken.

Not only individuals and families are concerned over the security issue. Jewish Communal institutions are also taking the new social realities seriously. Not only are such institutions concerned that they could be the target of random crime or antisemitic attack, but also that they could be the secondary target for attacks against other institutions. The Cape Town Jewish Communal Building, for example, is right around the corner from the Supreme Court Building. During the many protests organized in front of the Supreme Court building, there was a fear that any violence could turn against the Jewish Communal Building. But, as political violence has shown rather dramatically, concern is now focused on random criminal activity and potential terrorist attacks.

Synagogues and other Jewish institutions have tight security, coordinated by a Jewish protection agency and supplemented by private security companies. While these security measures are slightly less than those taken on continental Europe by Jewish institutions there, they are dramatic in comparison to what was deemed adequate just a few years ago.

Controlled Panic in the New South Africa: The Impact of Social Changes on the South African Jewish Community