South African Jews Face Hard Times, Says Jewish Activist on Visit to U.S.

Jews in South Africa are facing a difficult decade as their country goes through the wrenching changes needed to push aside the remnants of the apartheid system and move toward democracy.

This sentiment was expressed by Helen Lieberman, a South African grass-roots activist who has spent decades combatting the effects of apartheid in her country.

In an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on a visit here, Lieberman discussed the situation confronting South African Jews, as well as her own work in creating development projects for South Africa’s black majority.

Lieberman is on a two-month tour of the United States sponsored by the American Jewish Committee and is actively involved in the South African Jewish community.

Currently, various factions in the constellation of South African political groups are participating in negotiations designed to shape a future non-racial South African democracy.

But the turmoil associated with the change, combined with the lingering economic effects of international sanctions slapped on South Africa by the United States and others in the 1980s, has resulted in waves of Jews and other South Africans leaving the country.

Although the sanctions are gradually being lifted as South Africa moves away from apartheid, Lieberman said Tuesday that “the next 10 years will be very difficult” for South African Jews.

“They’re becoming an aging community,” Lieberman said.

A TINY FRACTION OF POPULATION

Many younger Jews have emigrated in recent years, leaving their elderly parents behind and settling in America, England or Australia.

While Lieberman pointed out that it is not only the Jewish community that is leaving South Africa, she acknowledged that Jews “have always been a mobile community.

“When things aren’t good, they go elsewhere,” she said.

Of South Africa’s total population of about 40 million, Lieberman said, only about 80,000 to 100,000 are Jewish.

South African Jews have tended over the years to be more liberal than most white South Africans, supporting political parties on the more progressive side of the spectrum.

Longtime former member of Parliament Helen Suzman, who is Jewish, served for much of her career as the lone opposition member representing the Progressive Federal Party, a liberal alternative to the ruling National Party.

“Jewish people have been very strong in individual capacities” working against apartheid, Lieberman said.

She herself has served as such an example in her own work. Beginning with her own personal funds, and later raising money from the Jewish community, Lieberman has helped to create a network of social service projects designed to train workers and educate children in South Africa’s sorely underdeveloped black townships.

The programs include old-age centers, daycare centers, job training programs for the disabled and education projects.