THE PRE-HISTORY OF APARTHEID

Senator Franz Ginsberg (1862-1936)

In the 1960s, my late mother used to mention her grandparents Franz and Hedwig, and often remarked that theirs were an odd pair of names. For a long time that was all that I knew about them. My late uncle Sven Rindl gave me an ingeniously designed family tree of our Ginsberg family many years ago, and I kept it as a curiosity. It assumed a great significance when, in about 2000, I began to become interested in the history of the families into which I was born. Soon after this, I learnt that Franz was a South African Senator and that he was held in high regard by my mother’s family. After investigating the lives of other members of my extended family, I began including Franz amongst those whom I researched. Several members of the extended Ginsberg family were kind enough to supply me with much interesting material, but at first I was unable to put them together to form a ‘big picture’ of Franz’s life. As I began to do so, I realised that not only was I discovering a great deal about his life, but also about a fascinating and important period during the history of South Africa.

I obtained a British Library Reader’s Ticket, and that was the key to unravelling Franz’s story. My great-grandfather Franz Ginsberg (1862-1936) left his birthplace in Prussia in 1880, and shifted to King Williams Town (‘King’) in the Eastern Cape of what is now South Africa. He lived there for the rest of his life. The British Library is home to a more or less complete run of one King’s newspapers, the Cape Mercury (the ‘Mercury’). When the newspapers were stored at Colindale, I used to drive there and spend several hours every Saturday morning leafing through the huge bound volumes of the paper. As I did so, fragments of the crumbling paper used to float down off the pages, which I imagine had hardly ever been looked at since they were printed in King and then bound by the library in London. I scoured every page from 1880 onwards looking for mentions of ‘Ginsberg’. Before 1885, there were no mentions of Franz because there was little reason for him to appear in the news. But, from 1885 onward both he and, to a lesser extent, his future brother-in-law the photographer Jakob Rindl began to appear at ever increasing frequency in the pages of the Mercury. For, it was in 1885, that Franz opened his own factory. It made matches. The match factory was followed by an ink factory, and then a candle factory, and later a soap factory.

Mentions of Franz in the Mercury became even more frequent after about 1890, when he entered local politics. First, he was elected a Town Councillor, then the Mayor for a while. Soon, Franz entered national politics, and became elected a Member of the Cape Parliament, a position that he held until 1910 when the Cape Colony and the three other colonies of southern Africa united to become ‘South Africa’. After unification, Franz became King’s member of the newly formed Cape Provincial Council. He remained on this until 1927, when he became the first elected Jewish Senator in South Africa. Franz’s name began appearing in the Mercury with ever increasing frequency until he became a Senator. After his ascent to the exalted position of Senator, he did not disappear from the pages of the Mercury, but mentions of him became less frequent because his civic duties in King occupied less of his time than the affairs of the Senate.

From 1885 onwards, the information that I gleaned from the pages of the Mercury, which is now stored in Yorkshire but made available in the British Library in Kings Cross, gave me a good idea of what Franz and his family were up to. The newspaper entries included detailed reports on the proceedings of the Town Council of King as well as what happened in meetings of other organisations, such as the town’s School Board, in which Franz participated actively for many years. From these reports, I began to build up a picture of how Franz functioned as a politician. The newspapers also included details of his comings and goings as well as a wealth of information about his and his family’s involvement in the life of King.

There are two other important sources of information about Franz, which I consulted. These were the reports of both the Cape Parliament and also of the South African Senate. Both of these publications reported the debates in the two legislative assemblies in great detail. The Cape Parliament reports recorded the debates as reported speech, whereas the Senate was reported more or less verbatim. Therefore, what is reported in the Senate debates is what the speakers actually said, rather than someone else’s summary. In the absence of any known recordings of Franz’s voice, what is preserved in the reports of the Senate’s debates is all that remains of the authentic voice of my great-grandfather.

In addition to the above mentioned, there was a host of other material that I consulted whilst preparing Franz’s biography. Some of this, including much interesting material about Franz’s diamond mining activities in German South West Africa (now ‘Namibia’) and his brother Gustave’s life, were from the National Archives of South Africa. Accessing this material remotely from the UK involved employing locals in South Africa to look up the documents (that I had identified in the archives’ on-line catalogue), and then photographing them to send to me. This was always most satisfactory. Books from the British Library and material sent to me by relatives provided more pieces to complete the jigsaw puzzle.

I have been researching Franz’s life for well over 10 years. Several times I tried to write his biography, but had to give up because although he achieved a great deal in many fields, his story did not seem to me to be of general interest. That was the case before I began looking in detail at what he did and said whilst he was a Member of the Cape Parliament, and then later a Senator in the Parliament of the Union of South Africa.

Franz was a Member of the Cape Parliament between 1905 and 1910. He was a Senator from 1927 until his death in 1936. Between 1910 and 1927, he was involved in provincial, rather than national, politics, representing King on the Cape Provincial Council. During the first 4 decades of the 20^th century, much legislation was passed that diminished what few rights the non-Europeans ever possessed. One can safely say that this legislation paved or eased the way towards the establishment of apartheid in 1948.

Arriving in South Africa aged 18, Franz did not have a university education. His father Nathan was an accomplished academic. For religious reasons, as I explain in my book, Nathan had to turn down offers of academic positions in German universities. So, despite not having attended university it is likely that Franz was well-educated when he arrived in South Africa. When he was involved with national politics, he debated with politicians, many of whom had attained a high level of formal university education: lawyers, clerics, and so on. Yet, the reports of the debates in which he was involved demonstrate that Franz was easily able to hold his own with his highly educated colleagues in the Parliament and the Senate.  Always an opponent of the Nationalists, he was able to see through the deviousness and disingenuousness of their arguments. And, being able to do so, he attempted to combat or at least to mitigate the unfair legislation that they were promoting. Sadly, he was one of a few lone voices crying out in the wilderness.

When I began to see what my investigations into Franz’s political life were revealing, I realised that writing about his life would result in something with greater interest than a simple biography. Franz’s biography opens a ‘window’ into the history of the evolution of apartheid.

Prejudice against non-Europeans in South Africa began as soon as the Dutch first dropped anchor in the waters lapping the Cape of Good Hope. During the 19^th century, under British rule, things did not improve for the non-Europeans. By the beginning of the 20^th century, ensuring the submission of the non-European population became an ever-increasing concern of legislators. The ending of the 2^nd Boer war in 1902, and the desire to unify the 2 former Boer republics (the Orange Free State and Transvaal) with the 2 British colonies (Cape Colony and Natal) led to a further reduction in the political status of the non-Europeans. This was because in order to achieve unification, the British felt obliged to acknowledge, or at least not challenge, the firmly held views of the Boers that non-Europeans were to be regarded as inferiors with no rights at all.

Franz’s role in the politics of this interesting era was that of trying to ensure that non-Europeans were fairly treated. However, this is an oversimplification as I explain in my book. His approach was complex, and at times unusual. Trying to explain his activities to today’s readership in the context of his times was one of the challenges of writing his biography. I feel that this is what gives my narrative interest to a wider audience. One reader in South Africa has already written:

“Your studious unravelling and compilation of Franz’s remarkable life … gave me a sense of the evolution of our country …”

It is this ‘sense of the evolution’ of modern South Africa that I had hoped to convey when I published my biography of Franz Ginsberg, “Soap to Senate: A German Jew at the dawn of Apartheid.” (By Adam Yamey)

Available on Amazon Kindle and from www.lulu.com (paperback edition) by typing “Soap to Senate” in the appropriate places on these websites.

The genesis of apartheid in South Africa

 

The book "SOAP TO SENATE: A GERMAN JEW AT THE DAWN OF APARTHEID" by Adam Yamey is the story of an enterprising man. His life was dedicated to improving the lot of those who were less fortunate than him, as well as advancing his own family. He lived in South Africa during the gestation period of apartheid  that was completed a dozen years after his death. Had there been more men who acted as he did, it is possible that apartheid might never have seen the light of day.

The man was my great-grandfather, the late Senator Franz Ginsberg (1862-1936). 

At the age of eighteen, he migrated from Germany to King Williams Town in the eastern part of the Cape Colony (in what is now ‘South Africa’). During the 56 years that he lived there, he served his adopted country and its people generously. He was a ‘Victorian’ man. However, he stood out s being unusual amongst his contemporaries because he tried to counter the relentlessly racist tide in South African governmental policy-making - something that he was able both to observe first-hand and also to criticise in the positions of public office that he occupied for many decades.

Ten years after Franz’s death, Steve Biko, the black anti-apartheid activist, was born in the King Williams Town (‘King’). This man, a founder of the Black Consciousness Movement, was callously murdered by the South African apartheid government in 1977. They were terrified by him, his ideas, and his powerful influence. In 2003 when I visited the Steve Biko Foundation headquarters in King, I was shown a room that contained a number of commemorative wall plaques. Each of these celebrated someone who was considered to have been important by the Foundation. With the exception of one, all of the plaques commemorated black Africans involved in the struggles for their rights. The exception was one to remember my great-grandfather. At first sight, there would appear to be little to link a German Jewish immigrant, such as Franz was, with a martyr to the cause of freedom of the black people in South Africa. However, there is a connection. Biko was born and also lived in an African ‘township’ in King Williams Town. Steve’s birthplace, Ginsberg Township, was named in honour of my great-grandfather. Franz wanted it built to give his African workers better housing.

Franz arrived in South Africa with a high-school German education, and then began working as a photographer’s assistant. Within a few years, he became one of King Williams Town’s leading industrialists. Soon after that, he entered local, and then, national politics. In 1927, he was awarded a great honour: he was elected a Senator in the South African Parliament, the first Jew to be so elected.

This book describes the life of my great-grandfather, who left Germany both to seek his fortune and also to escape religious prejudice. In his adopted country, South Africa, he found himself privileged to be a white man accepted by other Europeans on the basis of merit rather than religious beliefs. However, being a man of conscience with great sympathy for his non-European neighbours, he tried to strike a moral balance between easing the lot of his severely disadvantaged non-white compatriots and safeguarding the superior advantages of the white man. Franz exemplified the words of the famous Jewish scholar Hillel the Elder:

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I?”

The book is fully illustrated with photographs and maps

"SOAP TO SENATE: A GERMAN JEW AT THE DAWN OF APARTHEID"

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KEEP IT BRIEF!

When I was a child in the early 1960s, I loved chatting over the telephone. My father, whose childhood was spent in South Africa, did not share my enthusiasm for this; he kept his calls brief and to the point, and continues to do so today. I remember him telling me at least once that the telephone was designed to be used for giving short messages and for emergencies only, not for chatting. I often wondered why he had that idea.

Recently, as part of my research for a biography of my great-grandfather Senator Franz Ginsberg (1862-1936) I was leafing through some old issues of the Cape Mercury (published in King Williams Town in South Africa) dating back to 1924, when my father was a child. Almost every issue had a large advertisement giving the prices of three minute telephone calls from King Williams Town to other parts of South Africa. When I saw the prices, I began to understand my father’s feelings about telephone usage.

The same decaying newspapers that contained the telephone tariffs, also contained the daily market prices for foodstuffs and other commodities in the market at King Williams Town. These prices of everyday foodstuffs and so on put the prices of telephone calls into realistic perspective. For the same price as between 1 to 6 cabbages, sixpence, one could make a 3 minute call to nearby Peddie. The two shillings and sixpence that you might have spent on a three minute call to Port Elizabeth could have bought you any of the following: a dozen eggs; a live chicken (a good breed); a pound (454 grams) of butter; at least 33 pounds of forage for animals; or almost 100 pounds of tomatoes. In 1924, when my father was a child, telephone calls were really expensive. 

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Between profit and philanthropy

This is an introduction to a book that I am currently writing. There is much more work to be done before my manuscript is completed, let alone edited.  Any comments or reflections on this will be gratefully accepted.

Steve Biko (1946-1977), the black anti-apartheid activist and founder of the Black Consciousness Movement was callously murdered by the South African police. He was born ten years after my great-grandfather Franz Ginsberg (1862-1936) died in South Africa.

At first sight, there would appear to be little to link a German Jewish immigrant, such as Franz was, with a martyr to the cause of freedom of the black people in South Africa. However, there is a connection. Biko was born, and also lived in, an African ‘township’ in King Williams Town, a major industrial town in the eastern part of the Cape Province. Steve’s birthplace, Ginsberg Township, was named to honour my great-grandfather. The founding of this township and (others like it) marked a significant stage in the evolution of apartheid, an evil which Biko and his colleagues strove to combat.

Ginsberg arrived in South Africa aged eighteen with a basic education, and then began work as a photographer’s assistant. Within a few years, he became one of King Williams Town’s leading industrialists. Soon after that, he entered local, and then national politics. By 1927, he was awarded with South Africa’s highest honour: he was elected a Senator.

He left Germany both to seek his fortune and also to escape anti-Semitic persecution. In his adopted country, South Africa, he found himself privileged to be a white man accepted by others on the basis of merit rather than religious beliefs. Unlike many – if not most – of his white contemporaries in South Africa who regarded non-white people as members of an inferior species worthy of suppression and servitude, Ginsberg regarded them as fellow human beings. There is no doubt that he felt that the ‘white man’ should remain in charge in South Africa, and not risk being in competition with people whose background was not European.  However, he was a man of conscience with great sympathy for his non-white neighbours. During his life in South Africa, he tried hard and earnestly to balance his interests in safeguarding the advantages of the white people against his desire to ease the lot of their severely disadvantaged non-white neighbours.

My forthcoming book, which is at an early embryonic stage in its life, will describe the many-faceted life of my great-grandfather Franz Ginsberg – a patriotic capitalist with a philanthropic heart.

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THEY WENT TO SOUTH AFRICA

EXODUS TO AFRICA

By Adam Yamey

This is to tell potential readers what my latest book Exodus to Africa is all about.

Prior to the British taking over the Cape Peninsula in about 1800, Jews were not permitted to live there by the Dutch East India Company that had been governing the region for several centuries. Some Jews, who converted to Christianity, did set foot in what is now ‘South Africa’, but unconverted Jews did not. The arrival of the first openly practising Jewish settlers followed close on the heels of the commencement of British rule.

At first, there was a small trickle of Jewish settlers, almost all of them from Great Britain and the German states. A few arrived from St Helena. With the arrival of the Mosenthal brothers from Kassel, the flow began to increase. The Mosenthals and their Jewish associates began setting up a chain of trading stores, which effectively began to make the remote interior of the Cape Colony begin to prosper. All of this activity began before diamonds (in about 1868) and gold (in about 1880) put South Africa (i.e. the territories that united after 1910) amongst the economically significant countries in the world. Before the discovery of these precious commodities and the opening of the Suez Canal, The Cape was little more than a place, like the tiny island of St Helena, where ships stopped to pick up water and supplies whilst they travelled between Europe and Asia. It was not a place that attracted many immigrants, Jewish or otherwise, from Europe. The USA was the most favoured destination for those seeking a better life. The diamond and gold ‘industries’ that began in the latter half of the 19^th century changed this. South Africa became attractive to immigrants including the Jews. The trickle of Jews from Europe to South Africa began to become an exodus (especially from Tsarist Lithuania). At the beginning of the 19^th century, there were a handful of Jews in southern Africa. By the 1930s, as many as one in twenty ‘white’ people was Jewish.

My book, Exodus to Africa, takes a fresh look at the reasons Jews chose to travel to South Africa; how they got there; what they did when they arrived; what they and their descendants did to affect the history of the country; how they helped to oppose racial inequality (apartheid and its antecedents).

The first of my relatives to arrive in South Africa was Heinrich Bergmann from Bavaria. He disembarked at Cape Town in 1849. The last of them, my father’s cousin Hendrik Jami, who arrived 100 years later. Between these two dates, many members of both of my parents’ families migrated from Europe to South Africa. Their diverse experiences cover many aspects of Jewish life in the country. Using many of their stories to illustrate these, I have attempted to produce a history of the Jews in the south of Africa.  The stories are told against the ever changing historical background of the troubled country where they chose to settle. My book is based on a multitude of sources, both previously unpublished primary material (documentary and from interviews) and also published secondary documentation.

Here are a few of the ‘protagonists’, whose tales are unfolded in my book:

Heinrich Bergmann (1830-1866), an early settler typical of the Jewish man who joined the Mosenthal Brothers.  His life took a surprising turn.

Jakob Seligmann (1846-1906), from Bavaria, was a ‘founding father’ of a small town in the Orange Free State. He fell afoul of the law and fled from Africa.

Sigmund Seligmann (1856-1939), also from Bavaria, started as an employee in the Cape Colony, and then began his own successful trading business before retiring to Germany in the late 1890s.

Franz Joseph Ginsberg (1862-1936), from a part of Prussia that is now Poland, began life in South Africa as a photographer. Soon, he became an industrialist, and then first an influential local politician, and later a national one. In 1927, he was elected a Senator in the Parliament of united South Africa.

Gustav Ginsberg (1872-1922), Franz’s brother, a dentist, who suffered from the effects of the vagaries of first the 2^nd Boer War and then later the First World War. His sons became well-known in the arts, both in South Africa and the USA.

Iwan Bloch (1886-1931), from Baden-Württemberg, who began working as a shop assistant in Zurich, and ended up the Mayor of a town in South Africa.

Joseph Halperin (1870- c. 1949) sailed to South Africa with his wife and three children. Ran a bakery and then a dairy in Cape Town before retiring to enjoy the successes of his children who had advanced up the ‘social ladder’.

Solomon Yamey (1883-1931) left his shtetl in Tsarist Lithuania and became a wandering pedlar (‘smous’) in the Cape before owning his own successful store in an Afrikaans speaking town near Cape Town. 

 By the time that John Katzin (1866-1931), who was born in Tsarist Lithuania, arrived in South Africa he had already lived in Amsterdam and London. In South Africa, he made a fortune in the laundry business. Some of his children became noted in wider world of public work and literature.

Henry Polak (1882-1959), [seated left in the picture above] a lawyer with London, became one of MK (later the ‘Mahatma’) Gandhi’s close associates in South Africa.

David Kitson (1919-2010) was one of the brave people with Jewish roots who actively supported the struggle against apartheid. His cousins the Budlenders, of Lithuanian and Polish Jewish extraction, risked arrest and worse because of their brave stand against the iniquities of racial oppression in South Africa.

There is no doubt that though a small proportion of the European population of South Africa, the 

Jewish people played a disproportionately large role in the development and history of its country 

from 1800 onwards. Freed from the repression and hostility that they faced in the countries where 

they were born, they flourished in a country that was no stranger to oppression. Exodus to Africa  explores all of this and much more. 

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