Jews have a future in the new South Africa, in which blacks will have majority rule, Harry Schwarz, South Africa’s new ambassador to the United States, believes.
“Some Jews will leave,” Schwarz conceded at a luncheon here last Friday sponsored by the American Jewish Committee. But he added, “The majority, I think, will stay.”
Schwarz, a 66-year-old Johannesburg lawyer, has been active in the Jewish community on the national executive of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies. He has also been one of South Africa’s most vigorous opponents of apartheid.
It is his belief that the steps to end apartheid taken by President F.W. de Klerk and his governing National Party are irreversible that led Schwarz to resign from Parliament to become Pretoria’s ambassador in Washington. For 16 years, he served in Parliament in the opposition Democratic Party and its predecessor, the Progressive Federal Party.
Unlike the previous ambassador, Schwarz makes a point of saying that he is representing all 37 million people in South Africa, not just the 5 million whites.
He believes that life in the new South Africa “will not be as easy” for whites. But he does not believe whites will be treated in the harsh manner that they treated blacks.
Schwarz pointed out that South African Jews have provided “more than a fair share of people who have stood up for the rights of underprivileged people.”
In every election since 1948, when the National Party came to power and began introducing apartheid, no supporters of apartheid have been elected in areas where Jews dominate the vote, Schwarz said.
‘DON’T HAVE TO BE ASHAMED OF US’
“You don’t have to be ashamed of us when it come to our record,” Schwarz told the AJCommittee leaders, though he added, “It doesn’t mean we could not have done more.”
Schwarz has done his share in opposing apartheid. He was brought to South Africa as a child from Nazi Germany after his father was unable to get a visa to enter the United States.
“It is somewhat ironic that I come back to the United States as an ambassador when my father couldn’t get a visa,” he observed.
Because South Africa gave him a home, “I consider myself as owing a great debt to that country,” Schwarz said. “It is a debt which I can never repay fully. Perhaps that is why I went into politics.”
But he added, “I would never have gone into politics if I would not have had a background of being a victim of racial discrimination.”
Schwarz, who served in the British Royal Air Force and the South African Air Force during World War II, returned home to find that the Afrikaner-dominated National Party had come to power and begun introducing discriminatory laws.
He helped organize the Torch Commando, a group of World War II veterans who demonstrated against the apartheid laws that had been enacted. His activism landed him in Parliament in 1974.
Schwarz said he agreed to leave Parliament in February and come to Washington because he wants to help lay down the foundation of the new South Africa.
For President de Klerk, it was an opportunity to send someone to Washington with anti-apartheid credentials, to convince Americans that the change in South Africa is real.
WANTS U.S. SANCTIONS LIFTED
But some feel Schwarz’s actual task is to convince the U.S. Congress to lift the economic sanctions against South Africa. Schwarz said that South Africa will meet all the conditions for lifting the sanctions by the end of June.
Like many other South African white liberals, Schwarz maintains that sanctions have hurt the oppressed more than the oppressors.
He also argues that de Klerk has moved to abandon apartheid, not because of the sanctions, but because he realizes that South Africa cannot maintain minority rule.
He said the leadership of the National Party realizes it must negotiate with black groups, such as the African National Congress, “now, when they still have power to talk about the constitution and the economy.” If they wait another 10 years, they will have no bargaining power.
If the sanctions are lifted, they will not help the present government, but the future majority-run one, Schwarz argued.
“Apartheid is yesterday’s debate; today’s debate is a question of negotiations; tomorrow’s debate is that of reconstruction for South Africa and making South Africa a better place,” he said.
Schwarz expressed confidence that the constitution will institute democratic government in South Africa, and he feels the United States can help in this process by setting an example.
But he emphasized that South Africa will only remain democratic if it can solve its economic problems, of which the most drastic is the need for a million new homes for blacks now living in squalor.
“We are going to have a universal franchise, but you see, ladies and gentlemen, a vote doesn’t fill a stomach,” he said.
Because of the discrimination and degradation suffered by blacks, they will have great expectations of the new government, despite the country’s limited resources, Schwarz said. He observed that this is what is happening in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe.
NO RIGHT TO POINT FINGER AT ISRAEL
“The people who have been deprived, the people who have been discriminated against when the day of freedom comes, I don’t want them to turn around and say it isn’t any different from what it was before economically,” Schwarz said.
He said the United States has “a moral obligation to at least put the thing right,” not by extending aid, but through trade and investments.
Schwarz also said that while Israel trades with South Africa, it does so much less than Black Africa and the Arab world do.
“If anybody in this world could have brought South Africa to its knees by means of sanctions or boycotts, it was the Arab states,” he said. “They have continued to supply us with oil. They have no right to point a finger at Israel.”
Meanwhile, the new ambassador, who arrived here in March, is still looking for a synagogue to attend. “But it will have to be Orthodox,” said Schwarz, who is a member of an Orthodox shul in his hometown of Yeoville, a Johannesburg suburb.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
