Behind the Headlines a Jewish Conscience in South Africa’s Parliament

Yeoville is a Johannesburg constituency which is mainly Jewish. During World War II it produced the country’s only Jewish Cabinet Minister, Dr. Henry Gluckman, who was Premier Jan Smuts’ Minister of Health. Today its voters are represented by Harry Schwarz, one of a handful of Progressive Federal Party opposition MPs.

Regarded by some as Parliament’s stormy petrel, friend and foe alike concede that Schwarz is one of South Africa’s top five parliamentarians. He comes over strong on matters of defense and of economics, and he is always ready to stand up for the underdog as a kind of conscience for the underprivileged. The government does not try to ignore the bright ideas that issue forth from the agile mind of their chief opponent.

In one instance his efforts to get dialogue going with Black leaders were bitterly criticized by the Vorster Administration. Today the new and more liberal administration of Prime Minister Piet Botha accepts the open dialogue approach. Indeed, Botha became the first South African Premier to visit the sprawling Black city of Soweto.

Schwarz has occasionally been teased good naturedly about his Jewish background inside Parliament — and not so good-naturedly outside of it. He recently retorted to the old charge of the far-right, about the Jews’ alleged dual loyalty (to South Africa and to Israel), saying “that I love my wife does not make me love my mother less.”

GOVERNMENT’S ATTITUDE TOWARD JEWISH COMMUNITY

Writing in a recent issue of the Zionist Record and South African Jewish Chronicle, Schwarz-observed: “Since this government came to power its behavior towards the Jewish community has been exemplary. I can say this as an opposition member of Parliament who criticizes and attacks the government on many issues.” He also noted: “We (Jews) do not claim to have done more for South Africa than others, but we certainly do not concede that we have done, or are doing less.” His remarks were reprinted by the leading national mass-circulation “Sunday Times” as an editorial page feature.

Now Schwarz has again turned his attention to the South African working man. Writing in the “Rand Daily Mail” he concedes that with the new Botha Administration “we are on the brink of a period of dramatic change” in South Africa. But, says Schwarz, very little is heard of economic change as compared to the political arena, and where labor matters are discussed, it is almost exclusively in the field of labor conditions, wages and trade unions.

EFFECTIVE WAY TO COMBAT MARXISM

With Cuban forces near South Africa’s borders, Schwarz remarks: “The most effective way to combat Marxism is by marketing and implementing a system which is demonstratively more attractive — where the working man not only enjoys more benefits, but where he has real hopes of improving his position. “He then turns to the South African free market system:

“There is much talk of free market mechanisms being the soundest basis for an economic system. However, the free market can only operate justly if there is equality of bargaining power in the market place. Historical events have caused inequality in bargaining power. This is an issue quite separate from color issues. The resources available to capitalists in the marketing mechanism — the ability to manipulate prices, monopolistic combines and the sheer pressure of money power, let alone advantages in skills, training, education and other resources — make the ordinary citizen unable to compete equally in the market place, and often make it not a market place but a jungle where the fittest survive.”

Schwarz then recommends a program of social democracy: “The state must play a role. No one objects to state interference to provide physical protection by laws, rules, courts and police forces — all this to ensure justice and protection to the physically weaker. Why then should there be an objection to the protection of the economically weak, to ensure there is equality of bargaining power in the market place? Consumer protection is essential Rules against monopolistic abuse must exist. Exploitation must be stamped out.”

Schwarz does not see the long-term solution in terms of social benefits, but in the creation of jobs at a time of unemployment, housing and the combatting of rural poverty. The underprivileged must be assisted to prosper, says Schwarz, “if there is not to be a Marxist-type redistribution of wealth.”