By Gwynne Robins
The Board is a human rights organisation and we take stands not only against antisemitism but also against racism and have written to the newspaper when episodes of Islamophobia and xenophobia have occurred.
The most visible of these was the May 2008 xenophobic outbreak that started in Gauteng and reached Cape Town where thousands fearing attack fled. Many organisations including the UJW, Habonim Dror, the Progressive Jewish Congregation and the Board, led by Viv Anstey, stepped in to assist in housing and feeding them. The Board launched a campaign and a large sum was collected for them as well as donations of e-pap.
The Board took over a group which was sheltering for safety outside the Caledon Square Police Station in the rain, and moved them into the Weizmann School Hall, where one parent fixed up a television, another brought games for the children, while others complained. They were later rehoused, repatriated and the Board paid for some to stay in a city hotel until this could be arranged.
The Board’s involvement has been acknowledged in a thesis by Mazibuko Jara and Sally Peberdy on “Progressive humanitarian and social mobilisation in a neo-apartheid Cape Town: a report on Civil Society and the May 2008 Xenophobic Violence”: “The Jewish Board of Deputies played a significant role in finding shelter for people displaced in the centre of the city who were refusing to move to the camps”
Two years later, Lindy Diamond, the Board’s media and diplomatic liaison, using some money from the xenophobia fund, helped provide training to Zimbabweans through Adonis Musati, in the knowledge required to advise their members on negotiating governmental bureaucracy. The remaining e-pap was donated to a home for orphaned HIV/AIDS children managed by the Baha’i.
The Board, a founder member of the Hate Crimes Working Group, attended a workshop at the Scalabrini Centre to help draft their research questionnaire and learnt much about the problems of refugees. In order to obtain refugee status papers, refugees have to queue up at regular intervals at Departments of Home Affairs, however the Cape Town refugee reception office closed in 2012, requiring an expensive trip to places like Messina.
Despite our 1998 Refugee Act and a Bill of Rights granting equality before the law, human dignity and non-discrimination, the government’s progressive ideas are seldom reflected by the officials entrusted with implementing them. Jews well know what it was like when their citizenship was revoked in Germany, without which they were denied the rights to social protection.
This is what it is like for the unregistered refugees and foreigners, unable to register their babies, admit them to school or go to hospital. Finally the Legal Resources Centre, on behalf of the Scalabrini Centre, and Somali Association of South Africa, took Home Affairs to Court and the Supreme Court of Appeal in 2017 ordered Home Affairs to reopen the Cape Town office by March 31, 2018. This did not happen, and the Board sent several letters to the paper and to the Department asking that the Court order be obeyed. It was only reopened in January this year, shortly before lockdown (when it again closed).
The Congolese later approached the Board asking, not for financial help, but to learn how to organise themselves. A workshop for their community was arranged with Stanley Ginsberg at the A4 Arts Foundation and another for the Rwandans. As a result of the knowledge gained in the workshop the Congolese were able to organise themselves into a Congolese Civil Society (CCS).
Xenophobia was again rearing its head and the CCS contacted the Board about a xenophobic attack on a Congolese school girl, landing her in hospital, as the class felt the position of class monitor should have gone to a local student, not a foreigner. We put the Argus in contact with the family – which turned it into a front page story – and helped them access a lawyer. Rael Kaimowitz wrote to the headmistress who had known about the class xenophobia for months but had taken no action. The Board contacted the journalist again when the CCS told it of a toddler whose head was cut open with a knife when she wandered from a party.
When refugees, fearing for their lives, fled to the UNHCR in the city, the Board assisted them with food and sanitary items until the refugees were forced out by the police into the Methodist Church where the group was taken over by two warlords and their enforcers, who refused access to the Board, the CCS and the Gift of the Givers.
Now we are all faced with the COVID-19 crisis. The lockdown has prevented the refugees from working. Their refugee status has prevented them from accessing UIF or the grants the Department for Social Development provides to citizens.
Once again the Board has stepped in to assist and has provided money for food parcels. It has received, in response, shop receipts and photos of every household with their food parcel and a signature of receipt. The demand is huge, resources and funds are limited.
May we only hope and pray that we shall all emerge unscathed and healthy.
Cape SA Jewish Board of Deputies website www.capesajbd.org
To read or download the full June 2020 issue PDF of the Chronicle, click here
To keep up to date on COVID-19 related community news, click here
Portal to the Jewish Community: to see a list of all the Jewish organisations in Cape Town with links to their websites, click here
To receive the Chronicle each month in your inbox instead of your postbox please email editor@ctjc.co.za and we will make it happen.
Follow the Chronicle: Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn
