Behind the Headlines the Cause That Binds

A rabbi from Johannesburg and a Black minister from Soweto are working together in a common cause to end injustice and oppression of the Black population of South Africa. Both are outspoken opponents of the system of apartheid and both share the view that only swift action can defuse a ticking time bomb.

For Rabbi Ben Isaacson and Rev. Zacharia Mokgoebo action does not mean pious phrases and shibboleths. Merely speaking out against apartheid is not enough, they asserted during an interview here with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“Speeches are speeches. Sermons are sermons. Statements are statements. It’s very nice to hear someone say he’s in favor of justice,” said Isaacson. “Who’s against justice and righteousness? It is only action, it is only commitment, and the credibility of the Jewish community in the Black community depends on the action they take, not on statements they make.”

Mokgeobo (pronounced Mo-khwebo) agreed with his colleague and pointed out the imperative need to take action, and soon. “There’s no doubt that we have only a grim, bleak future in South Africa. There is no sign that the government is willing to negotiate or to stop the system that generates violence. The government itself is violent. So the future is very bleak, actually.”

AN IMPERATIVE MISSION

The two men, softspoken and thoughtful, are in the United States for a six-week speaking tour to win support for non-racial Centers for Justice and Peace in South Africa. The two religious leaders said that the underpinning of their mission is a common belief in God and the principle that all men are created equal. Isaacson and Mokgeobo have been working together for a year on the South African chapter of the World Conference on Religion and Peace.

Their campaign for justice and peace centers, just beginning, got off to a good start in Europe where they visited before coming to the U.S. They said that in Amsterdam, support was pledged by Liberal Rabbi Avraham Soetendorp who formed an ad hoc committee to solicit support for their centers, which will need considerable funding. They also garnered church support in The Netherlands. Support was also forthcoming in Springfield, Mass., their first stop in the U.S., where the Springfield Council of Churches is studying their project.

CALLS FOR IMMEDIATE CHANGES

Isaacson, a rabbi for 27 years, has spoken out against apartheid during his entire career, befriending and working with the best-known activists in his country, including Nelson and Winnie Mandela, Rev. Allan Boesak, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

The 50-year-old Liberal rabbi, who was ordained as an Orthodox rabbi and studied in Brooklyn at Yeshiva Chaim Berlin, is clear in his message: he brooks no tolerance of “liberalism” in the struggle to bring justice for all humans in his home, calling instead for immediate changes to bring the vote, and total equality, to all.

For his constant participation in anti-apartheid activities, the rabbi has paid dearly in his congregation. Three years ago, he said, there were 300 people in attendance at Shabbat services. The number dwindled to about 35 by last fall, when he was on a solo speaking tour of the U.S. However, since then, the number of congregants at the Houghton Independent Congregation of Har-El has increased a bit, offering a ray of optimism in a situation that both he and his colleague described as “bleak and grim.”

Mokgoebo, a 35-year-old minister of the Dutch Reformed Church (Black Church), went through the entire segregated school system of South Africa. He received a Masters in Theology in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and studied for a doctorate in theology at the Free University in Amsterdam, an undertaking cut short by the death of his parents in South Africa.

Since 1975, Mokgoebo has been national organizer of the Belydendekring, a group of nonwhite dissident ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church founded by Boesak. He has also been a leader in the compilation the Kairos Document, which espouses liberation theology. He is a member of the Civic Association of Soweto, continuously in a state of confrontation with the Pretoria regime. Mokgoebo’s participation in the Dutch Reformed Church links him with Black ministers in America, specifically in the Black caucus of the Reformed Church of America.

Asked what he tells his congregants about God, and how he explains their suffering under apartheid in the context of their belief in God, Mokgoebo said that he tells them that “every human being is created in the image of God, and that God in not a God who justifies and sanctions slavery of whatever kind — oppression of whatever kind. Instead, the tradition of the Bible is that God liberates people from slavery — is liberating us, and calling us to be liberated today in a situation from apartheid, slavery and oppression.”

ROLE OF JEWS IN SOUTH AFRICA

One of the founders of an organization in South Africa, Jews for Justice, Isaacson spoke strongly about the role of Jews in South Africa, who, both men noted, are perceived as members of the white community, and, therefore, identified as oppressors. “Now I run into the difficulties,” said Isaacson, “because I have been accused of being an anti-Semite and all sort of things.”

The Jews in South Africa, said Isaacson, “have a unique Jewish historical situation. It’s unique because our parents and grandparents came to escape persecution and made us part of a persecutor system by coming to live in South Africa because Jews were accepted as whites. So for the first time in Jewish history, virtually, we could find such a situation. We have to research it. Jews are part of the oppressive society.

“From being the oppressed, we became part of the oppressors. And this obviously is at the crux of what an opponent of apartheid has to say within the Jewish framework in South Africa. My whole ministry has been devoted to this, 27 years of it. This has been my struggle.”

Isaacson said that Jews have lived as part of the white community, regarded totally as such. He spoke of 1985 as a “watershed year,” when at a conference of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies a statement was made attacking apartheid. He said that “For 25 years I called upon them to denounce apartheid.” For those 25 years, Isaacson said, “The answer was, and it was worded as follows: ‘There is no Jewish viewpoint on political issues. Jews vote according to their conscience as citizens of the country.” But, he added, Jews in South Africa have always been involved in the struggle against apartheid on an individual level.

He noted that the Board’s statement might be a case of too little and too late. Isaacson said that by jumping on the “bandwagon” that even white leaders of the Pretoria government were allegedly espousing, statements “didn’t change their actions. A statement attacking apartheid is not worth the paper it’s written on unless you follow it up by saying what it means.”

‘A NATIONAL ALLIANCE’

But what does it mean to be against apartheid, he asked. “To the Black majority,” said Isaacson, being against apartheid means “you must release Nelson Mandela; you must un-ban political organizations that are banned; you must lift the state of emergency; you must remove soldiers who are occupying the Black townships, and the schools in the Black townships, from those areas; and above all, you must say that you will work toward a one-person, one-vote state which means majority Black. This inevitably will happen — as I’m sitting here, I’m telling you it will happen–but unfortunately, they (the government) won’t do it now. They’ll do it only after bloodshed.”

Blacks and Jews, said Isaacson, “are a natural alliance. But I must point out that in South Africa our alliance goes further. It’s an alliance with Islam, as well, because basically the people are Moslems in our country. And it’s an alliance with Hinduism. It’s persecuted people who are Hindus in our country. And that’s why our interfaith group called the World Conference for Religions and Peace, South African Chapter, is involved in this project. All oppressed people… it’s a natural.”

ISRAEL-SOUTH AFRICAN RELATIONS

When asked about the issue of Israel-South African relations, and arms sales, Isaacson insisted that he refuses to scapegoat Israel.

Isaacson recalled that “there was a time when Israel took a different stand. After the Sharpeville massacre (1961), Israel was one of the first countries to vote for sanctions against South Africa in the Security Council of the United Nations, when Golda Meir was Foreign Minister. And the South African government got very angry and took its anger out on the Jews, those Jews who say how well they’ve been treated in South Africa.

“They (the Pretoria regime) immediately stopped all money going to Israel, for at least eight years, till after the Six-Day War. Israel’s relations with Africa got screwed up.” But Israel changed and Africa changed “and Israel became involved in military arrangements with South Africa.”

Isaacson has spoken out against this, and, he said, “Every time we brought this to the attention of Israel — people like myself and Desmond Tutu — he’s been called an anti-Semite for attacking Israel.” That’s not true, Isaacson insisted.

Tutu and Isaacson will travel together to Israel next year at the invitation of Peace Now in Israel. “The fact is that when in Israel, we will tell them exactly what we think because Desmond doesn’t ask for people’s permission to say what he thinks. But at the same time, having said all this, we have no right to make Israel the scape goat and to join the international lynch party against Israel, because Israel’s involvement in South Africa is part of western involvement in South Africa. It cannot be seen in a vacuum.”

THE DANGER FACING SOUTH AFRICA’S JEWS

Isaacson insisted that the danger to Jews in South Africa comes not from the critics of Israel’s involvement with his country, but from the rightwing in South Africa, the party of Eugene Terre Blanche, who, says Isaacson, “is not a neo-Nazi, he’s a Nazi. He’s had rallies of 10,000-15,000 people, where they use an insignia that is similar to the swastika. They sing German folksongs. They have said openly that Jews should be excluded from public life. They speak about the Jewish-Communist conspiracy. They’re Nazis. So if he comes into power, we’ll have some gas chambers in South Africa.

“But the Jewish community, the establishment, looks for anti-Semitism in Desmond Tutu. And there under its nose, is Nazism, which is not banned by the Pretoria regime. Only Black liberation struggle is banned.”

Together, Isaacson and Mokgoebo plan to set up many centers for justice in which people of all races, Black, colored, Indian, white, will learn together. They have plans to establish training programs for Black youth to learn business skills. There will be encounter groups. “It will not be a meditation center,” Isaacson observed wryly. They mean business.