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"

IS

AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK by clicking HERE

AND AS A KINDLE by clicking HERE

Or just type "SOAP TO SENATE" in the search box of either Amazon (your local regional site) or lulu.com

JEWISH IMMIGRATION: SOUTH AFRICA 1930

 DESIRABLE PEOPLE

This is a sample chapter from a work in progress by Adam Yamey. It is from the life of his great-grandfather Franz Ginsberg.

Here is a brief ‘blurb’ or introductory note about the book. It was kindly suggested to me by Sandra Haven:

Franz Ginsberg left Germany in 1880. He settled in South Africa as an 18-year-old photographer, escaping the restrictions on Jews, only to adopt a homeland with escalating restrictions on ‘black’ and other non-European people. Franz flourished as a manufacturer of a large variety of domestic products, becoming well-known as an industrial pioneer. Soon, his concern for people’s welfare plunged him to politics. From 1927 onwards, as one of the 32 elected Senators of the Union of South Africa, he attempted to mitigate the racist policies that many of his fellow legislators promoted. During his progression from Town Councillor to Senator, Franz opposed the law-making processes that were to lead eventually, after his death in 1936, to the establishment of apartheid. Franz Ginsberg, the author’s great-grandfather, battled for a better world in a time not yet ready for that change—leaving a unique story and legacy on the blueprint of our modern world.

This is the sample chapter from the draft manuscript (with footnotes omitted):

COPYRIGHT: ADAM R YAMEY, 2015

Less than a year after the German trade treaty had been signed, the Senate discussed a Bill in March 1930, the Immigration Quota Bill, relating to another kind of ‘import’: human beings - immigrants wishing to enter South Africa. This was just over two years before Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, and not much longer before the Jews of Germany would begin fleeing from their homes in ever increasing numbers.

The Minister of the Interior, DF Malan, who was later, in the words of A Parker, to begin “… the apocalyptic legislative assault on black South Africans… ” during the apartheid era, explained to the Senate that the new Bill was in response to questions being asked all over the country about:

“…whether there was not a vast stream of immigrants coming to this country, immigrants who were undesirable.”

People wanted to know what the Government was going to do about them. Malan said that there had been a large number of complaints that the then existing Immigration Act was being applied in an unfair and unjust way.  He explained:

“That was one of the complaints of a large section of the population, and more especially of the Jewish community in this country.”

Next, Malan talked about the Immigration Act passed in 1913. He said:

“The problem which I have mentioned is that we have a great influx of people on the one hand, chiefly from Eastern Europe. A vast and growing stream of immigrants is coming into this country, and the vast majority of them belong to a class of persons who follow a calling in life which has enough adherents in the Union, with the result that reinforcements are not required.”

Now, DF Malan was a highly educated man (he achieved a Master in Philosophy at Victoria College [which is now Stellenbosch University] and a Doctorate of Divinity at University of Utrecht) and chose his words carefully. He knew that one meaning of ‘adherents’ was ‘followers’ of, for example, a religious belief.  He must have also known that ‘calling in life’ can have a religious connotation. He continued to speak about this ‘class of persons’:

“They belong to what was known as the middle classes the commercial classes, people … who belong to the commercial classes, and do not produce … The commercial community is too large for the country. This is one side of the matter.”

The other side of the problem, he explained, was emigration: too many (white) people were leaving South Africa. The solution that he favoured was adopting a quota system such was already in force in countries like the USA, Australia, and Canada. This would be incorporated in the new Bill, which proposed that on certain countries there would be no restriction, and on all other countries there would be a quota. Those admitted on the quota system would be carefully selected by the Immigration Control Board. Malan said that the Bill envisioned admitting about 1000 people per year from quota countries, and that the line which was to be drawn between countries that were unrestricted and those that were restricted would depend on the current composition of the population already in South Africa. Next, he said something that sounds very sinister in the light of what we now know about Malan’s country:

“The second principle, on which we base this discrimination, is that every country desires immigrants that will strengthen the race and that will be readily assimilated. A nation wants to be homogenous…”

Then, to drive his point further:

“There can be no doubt that there has been a certain amount of nervousness in the country during the last few years on account of the stream of immigration out of Eastern Europe.”

There was a third principle behind the new Bill, namely the safeguarding of Western Civilisation in South Africa. On this point, Malan said the following:

“South Africa has set its heart on maintaining the western form of civilisation in this country. … There is the eastern civilisation, the European civilisation and then there is the western civilisation and the civilisation of Eastern Europe. These two civilisations differ from one another, and when we draw a line between the different countries in the future, we must be very careful that we note countries belong to the western civilisation and which do not.”

According to the tree principles, Malan explained to the Senate, a line was to be drawn between Eastern and Western Europe, and no restrictions were to be placed on any of the following: USA, Western Europe, and the various parts of the British Empire. He did not state it, but I imagine that an immigrant’s skin colour was also an important factor determining whether he or she should be allowed to settle in South Africa. In any case, this was a Bill directed mainly at certain members of the world’s ‘white’ population, as Franz was to point out later in the debate.

Franz was against the new Bill, considering that it was unnecessary: most of what was being proposed was already in the Immigration Act of 1913. He knew that there was an overwhelming majority of people in favour of the Bill, and he regretted that. He had been told that the new Bill was a reaction to the country’s then poor economic condition (low wool prices and so on). Franz continued by saying that he had heard the Minister saying often that he wished to keep ‘undesirables’ out of the country. He too was in favour of this, but had difficulty understanding how an ‘undesirable’ was defined. He said:

“I think in a country like this, every decent man ought to be admitted.”

Franz had been very pleased to hear that the Minister of Labour (FHP Creswell), Mr Tielman Roos , and a number of other leaders, had praised the patriotism and usefulness of the Jewish population of South Africa. Who were these people, Franz asked. They were, he said answering his own question, the very same class of people that the minister of the Interior wished to exclude with his new Bill. To a very large extent, he added, these useful Jews had come from the east, very largely from Lithuania and other countries in Eastern Europe.  Then, he spoke subtly to the Senate:

“I would like to say here that I do not hold the opinion that many people have expressed, that this Bill is anti-Semitic legislation, because I have too many proofs of goodwill extended towards the Jewish population of this country, so much proof that I cannot for one moment, believe, unless someone is lying, that there is, so far as personal experience is concerned, anything but sympathy and friendship with the Jewish people. I do not think there is much in the way of anti-Semitism in South Africa. … I have heard very much about the capabilities, the loyalty, and the patriotism of the Jewish people. So much so that one gets a little suspicious about these expressions, and I should ask why, if they are such good citizens, they are to be kept out of this country? There is a difference in outlook … between the Jewish people who come from the eastern part of Europe and those who come from the western part, but … that outlook quickly disappears in this country; in fact, it has been remarked that in an incredibly short time these people have become assimilated to such an extent that … they could not be distinguished from any other people.”

Regarding the Minister’s statement that there were too many middle-men in the country, he agreed. However, he pointed out, that the situation was changing: people were moving from one kind of occupation to another; the country population was moving into towns, and people were moving into industry and the professions. Gradually, Franz undermined the reasons that D Makan had given to back up his promotion of the new Bill.

After a short interruption, Franz continued with an impassioned speech, some of which is quoted here:

“Considerable difficulties will arise in connection with this Bill… It has caused ridiculous anomalies. … There have been perfectly new boundaries created in Europe since the war, countries that formerly belonged to Germany have become, for instance, Polish … there is Silesia too. My birthplace is in Silesia and I am very glad to think I would not come under the ratio of prohibited countries, although that might have been the case if the boundary laid down in the Peace Treaty had been shifted a few miles.”

Beuthen, where Franz was born, remained in Germany until 1945 when it was transferred to Polish rule following the Potsdam Conference in that year. Franz continued:

“I was born in Germany and the boundary was about 20 to 25 miles from my town. Since the war, however, my native town has been cut in half, and the one part is in Poland, and the other part in Germany, and, therefore, I might well have become a Pole if I had lived on the other side of the boundary. Are we to look upon Kubelik, who charmed Cape Town with his violin when he was here, as a prohibited immigrant, or would Mr Paderewski, supposing he wanted to become a music teacher in Cape Town, be permitted to do so, unless the Minister was good enough to allow him? And what would be the position of a person like Professor Voronoff?...”

I am not sure that the city of Beuthen was actually divided in two after WW1; maybe Franz was really referring to the countryside surrounding it. Kubelik, the violinist was Jan Kubelik (1880-1940) who was born in Prague ; Jan Paderewski (1860-1941), born of Polish parents in Czarist Poland, was  the composer and one-time Prime Minister of Poland ; and Serge Voronoff (1866-1951)  was a celebrated (in Franz’s time, but not these days) surgeon born of Jewish parents in Czarist Russia .  Returning to Franz’s speech:

“Apart from these cases, I would like the Minister to explain what the position is of the man in Rhodesia … at least so far as I understand the Bill they would still come under the quota number.”

Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), which shared a long border with South Africa, refused to join the Union of South Africa when the chance was offered in 1922, and was annexed by the UK to become a colony in 1923 . The point that Franz raised was that under the new Bill, Rhodesia, which contained many people who would have been acceptable or ‘desirable’ immigrants in the eyes of the Nationalist dominated Government of South Africa, would have become subject to the rules that were designed to limit immigration from Eastern Europe.  Franz went on to say:

“… I do not agree with the arguments of so-called assimilation. How many people who are now in the country, people belonging to a variety of nationalities, do assimilate? Even between Scotch and English, Dutch and English, or German and English or Dutch. How many intermarry?  They all work hand in hand and there does not seem to be any difficulty. They hold their different views and have their different traditions, but presumably they are trying to work hard for the good of the country.”

With regard to the ‘desirability’ of people from Western Europe, Franz asked:

“… whether people from the south of France and from Portugal are to be considered Nordics. I do not know whether they are to be considered more desirable than the people from Lithuania.”

Later on, he told the House that there were 60-70,000 people in South Africa, whose feelings were hurt by the Bill. Then, he said:

“The objects of the Bill could have been attained otherwise, and the restrictions that are considered desirable could have been managed by some other means without making it so obvious that those concerned are not to be considered part and parcel of South Africa. I am referring to the Jewish people of South Africa who have settled here. I came here almost 50 years ago as a stranger. This country has given me a home and has made me welcome, and I have been able to get a comfortable position here … I have considered myself a South African. I have come to live in this country, but I now begin to be doubtful whether I am going to be permitted in future whether to consider myself wholly and solely South African. The Honourable minister has spoken about problems with which this country is faced, and to me it is an insult of the first water to compare the problems of the natives and the Indians with the problems of Jews in South Africa. I am sorry that such an insult should have been levelled at a people which is supposed to be held in high esteem from the Prime Minister downwards, and it makes me wonder whether I am permitted in future still to love this country.”

Senator GG Munnik  (Transvaal) followed Franz’s speech by saying that he felt strongly that just as everyone has a right to say who is his guest, the country had the right to say who could enter, and who could not. He agreed with the Minister of the Interior that the stream of immigrants from Eastern Europe was undesirable for three reasons. First, he said that South Africa has two industries - mining and agriculture - but the Eastern European immigrants engaged in neither of these ‘industries. Secondly, because they were poor, it seemed to Munnik that:

“…South Africa may now be called a Tom Tiddler’s land. Everyone who comes here to the Tom Tiddler’s land and desires to play the master.”

Tom Tiddler’s land (or ground), for those who are unfamiliar with this, is land or ground occupied by someone who is easily taken advantage of, or “…where pickings may be sought or had without effective interference ”. Munnik was implying that the South Africans (probably his fellow Afrikaners) were easy prey to the new arrivals. Thirdly, he said that the people from Eastern Europe knew neither Afrikaans nor English, and:

“…scarcely ever learn them; they only come here to make money by some means and such people are unnecessary in the country. They will remain a separate colony and we do not need them. Are we in need of people who are going to increase the problems of the country?”

Having just listened to Senator Munnik, Senator JA Neser (Transvaal) was amused by what his colleague had just said about the Eastern European immigrants. He said:

“Only a few days before he [i.e. Munnik] had brought forward a Bill for the encouragement of horse-breeding and horse-racing, and it is the people who he has now been denouncing who are the greatest supporters of horse-racing in this country.”

Then, a few moments later, he slipped into the disingenuousness so typical of racist policy-makers in South Africa:

“It is extremely unfortunate that our Jewish friends have taken it into their heads that the Bill is principally directed against them because there is not a word about the Jews or any other nationality in the Bill. It is just a coincidence that a large number of Jews come from that part of the world against which this bill is directed.”

Well, so it was! Franz was not the only Senator to defend the Jewish people in South Africa. Senator CJ Langenhoven  (Cape Province), an active promoter of the use of Afrikaans rather than Dutch in the Cape, refuted Munnik’s suggestion that Jews who came to South Africa did not learn English or Afrikaans; the opposite was true. He added:

“If there are any of our friends who maintain that the Jew is undesirable, then I want to repudiate it, and I speak on behalf of the Afrikaans-speaking section of the population.”

Just when I was beginning to guess how Langenhoven would vote, that is against the Bill, his words showed how wrong I was:

“The Jew is the biggest nationalist in the whole world and in the circumstances he succeeded in maintaining the purity of his race to a greater extent than any other race in the world. The result is that the Jews remain a separate group, they form one herd, and as such do not readily assimilate with the rest of the population.”

Langenhoven, like the other supporters of the Bill, was concerned that without new controls the Dutch- and English-speaking world would become dominated by the ‘Jewish race’, and this was a reason that he would be voting for the Bill. Having demonstrated his pro-Semitism, he gave his reason for voting in favour as being not that the Jews were ‘undesirable’, but in order to achieve the self-preservation of, in his words, “our race”.

On the following day, the 5th of March 1930, the Minister of the Interior, DF Malan, made another speech in which he referred to Franz’s speech made on the previous day. He said:

“… not only do we all want him [i.e Franz] to consider himself a South African but we want to make it possible in a much greater measure than he has done today… as I said in the other House, in introducing this Bill, I consider this measure to be even more in the interests of the Jewish community in this country in that they want to identify themselves with South African life, with the South African nation, they would like to be treated on a footing of equality with other sections of the community, and they want to take their share in the national life of South Africa. That is only possible if there is no feeling arising in this country, such as there exists, unfortunately, in other countries, against the Jew as a Jew. That feeling, today does not exist to a large extent, and there is no doubt about it that it is dormant, but if this great influx of people from oversea should continue that feeling should continue, and it will become increasingly difficult for the Jewish community to come into their own, and take their share in the life of South Africa on a footing of equality. I say, therefore that not only has the Honourable Senator [i.e. Franz] a right to consider himself South African, but what we want with to do this Bill is to make it easier for himself and others to consider himself in that light.”

This speech was made less than three years before the South African version of the German Nazis, the Greyshirts led by Weichardt, began to wake up the ‘dormant’ anti-Semitism in South Africa.

The Senate passed the Bill, but continued discussing it ‘in Committee’. The schedule of countries which were not subject to quotas for immigration to South Africa were: Territories within the British Commonwealth, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the USA. Senator G Hartog (Transvaal), who was Jewish, could not understand why if Poland was excluded, why Austria was included. Also, he asked why Portugal, Italy, and Spain were included if the intention was, in his words, to:

“… replenish our stocks from the original Nordic stock.”

He felt that Latvia and Finland should be included in the schedule. He must have known that Latvia was the origin of quite a few Jewish immigrants to South Africa. To which Franz replied:

“I am going to vote against this [Bill] on principle. I am against restriction and therefore I am against deletion of any country from the schedule. I would certainly vote for the addition of a country to the schedule…”

The Minister of the Interior defended the inclusion of Spain, Portugal, and Italy because they had been included as being required for the maintenance of a “Western European Civilisation” in South Africa. He regarded Finland as being part of Eastern Europe, but not worth including as few Finns wanted to come to South Africa. Unlike Latvia, which Hartog wished to see included amongst the unrestricted countries, Finland had a negligible population of Jews. So, it could have been included on the schedule without risking much in regards to Jewish immigration to South Africa!

Fighting a losing battle, Franz, who was against the Bill, repeated that he had heard that the Minister of the Interior had wanted to secure immigrants of the ‘Nordic type’. He failed to see how people from Italy, Portugal, Spain, and some parts of France could be considered Nordic.

The so-called ‘Quota Act’ came into force on the 1st of May 1930, just over five years before Hitler and his government enacted the notorious Nuremberg Laws. This Act had the “immediate effect of reducing considerably the flow of Jewish immigrants, as of others from the restricted countries.” CP Robinson, a Jewish Member of the Union Parliament who recognised the anti-Semitic intent of the Bill, said of it (before it became an Act):

“… At present it is the poor Lithuanian, tomorrow it may be the Jew from Germany or France that will not be allowed to come in.”

Sadly, he was right. South Africa, like so many other countries with the notable exception of tiny Albania, ceased to be much of a safe haven for Jews trying to escape from the murderous intentions of the Nazis. Luckily for Franz, he did not live long enough to see the consequences of the Quota Act of 1930.

COPYRIGHT: ADAM R YAMEY, 2015

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http://www.adamyamey.com - Adam Yamey's website

BLACK AND WHITE, BUT NOT AT THE CINEMA!

Image source:

http://originalpeople.org/in-1810-a-freed-slave-named-tom-molineaux-fought-in-one-of-the-most-important-fights-in-the-history-of-boxing/

Currently, I am researching the life of my great-grandfather, Franz Ginsberg, who lived from 1862 until 1936. He migrated from Prussia to the Cape Colony in 1880, and by the early 1890s he was an important industrialist, making everyday essentials (such as matches, soap, and candles) in the Eastern Cape town of King Williams Town. In 1927, after many years in politics - both local and national, he was elected a member of the Senate of South Africa. To flesh out the biography that I am writing I have been reading the verbatim reports of the debates of the South African Senate. These are stored in the British Library. They contain what the Senators actually said, and therefore they are an ideal place to get some flavour of what my great-grandfather, who I never met, had to say.

One of the debates in which Franz Ginsberg was a participant was about the Entertainments (Censorship) Bill that was going through the South African Parliament in 1931. By this time, South Africa was ruled by a coalition Government that was dominated by the Nationalist Party under Prime Minister JBM Hertzog (1866-1942), which was elected into power in 1924. It would be somewhat of an understatement to say that even before South Africa became a Union in 1910, the non-European population of the country was very much the underdog. The Nationalist Party did very little to reverse the situation; it would be accurate to say that they made life for non-Europeans increasingly worse as time went on.

The Entertainments (Censorship) Bill, mentioned above was to establish a film censorship board whose role it was to examine:

“…films and film advertisements intended for public exhibition in any place in the Union.”

My great-grandfather was against this Bill because of the contents of some of the clauses defining what was unacceptable in films to be shown to the people of South Africa. Some of these reflect the prudishness of the Government of the times. For example: “the treatment of death”, “nude human figures”, “passionate love scenes”, & “scenes purporting to illustrate ‘night life’” -

Others were to protect the public from scenes relating to “controversial or international politics”, scenes relating to industrial relations, scenes “disparaging public characters,” and those liable to “create public alarm”: 

There are a few clauses that are particularly interesting, because they are harbingers of the apartheid regime that was to afflict South Africa between 1948 and the beginning of the 1990s. These relate depicting interactions between Europeans and non-Europeans. These clauses forbid the showing of films which:  contain “pugilistic encounters between Europeans and non-Europeans”; and “scenes of intermingling of Europeans and non-Europeans”:

My great-grandfather correctly pointed out that clause (o), which forbade showing “scenes of brutal fighting”, rendered clause (q), which forbade “pugilistic encounters between Europeans and non-Europeans”, redundant. If brutal fighting was to be banned, that would include ‘pugilistic encounters’ of any kind, be they between European and European or between European and non-European. So, logically, he was correct, but it was a different logic that was being employed by the Government in 1931 (and later on), the logic of racism.

[Illustrations from the published Debates of the South African Senate] 

For more writing

by Adam Yamey,

please visit:

http://www.adamyamey.com

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.

Click HERE visit Adam Yamey's

Author Page

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From Europe to Freedom

 * * * * *

Almost as soon as the British took over the Cape Colony from the Dutch at the beginning of the 19^th century, practising Jews began arriving there. At first, most of them were occupied in trade although at least one was a medical practitioner. Amongst the earliest traders were well-known names such as Bergtheil, Norden, Solomon, Thalwitzer, and the Mosenthals. The latter were responsible for opening up the interior of the Cape to trade, as well as bringing out more Jewish men from Germany (mainly) to work in their network of trading stores.

Until the discovery of first diamonds and then gold in what is now South Africa, most Jews leaving Europe tended to head westwards to the USA. After the valuable products started being unearthed, the number of Jews heading towards South Africa rose sharply. Both the increasing prosperity of the 4 constituent territories (that were to unify in 1910 to become South Africa) and also the pogroms in Tsarist Russia led to Eastern European Jews, especially from Lithuania and its neighbours, flowing into the country in ever increasing numbers.

Despite the Jewish people always being a small proportion of the European population of South Africa, they ‘punched above their weight’ – they made a disproportionately large contribution to its development, economically, politically, and in many other ways. This has been described masterfully and in great detail in “The Jews of South Africa” edited by Saron & Hotz, which was published in the 1950s.

My book “Exodus to Africa” approaches the story of Jewish migration from Europe to South Africa from a different angle. I have used the stories of some members of my large South African family to exemplify and illustrate a range of aspects of this movement of Jews out of the lands where they were subject to oppression to a place where they were largely respected and allowed to lead their lives without undue hindrance. My story begins with the earliest member of my family to arrive in the Cape (in 1849), the German Heinrich Bergmann, and it ends with the last person to arrive from Europe, Hendrik Jami. He arrived in the Cape in 1949, having travelled from Lithuania via Shanghai.

“Exodus to Africa” - a study of mass movement of an oppressed people - describes why Jewish people left Europe; how they got to South Africa; what they and their descendants did there; and how some of them influenced the history of the country. My stories include those who witnessed, or were in some way directly involved in: the Cape Convict Crisis of 1849; the Anglo-Boer War; the Union of South Africa; railway building in the Eastern Cape; diamond ‘mining’ in South West Africa; Jewish Territorial Organization; the Grey Shirts; building ‘locations’; fighting in both World Wars; municipal government; and opposing apartheid. My book adds a personal flavour to spice the general history. The examples chosen from my family all illustrate general points relevant to the history of the Jews in South Africa. My story might well be subtitled ‘From Mosenthal to Mandela’

The book is available in paperback ( from www.lulu.com) and also in the Amazon Kindle format.

PAPERBACK: click HERE

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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. 

Exodus to Africa is NOW available on KINDLE:

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