Probe Anti-semitic Campaign Against Leader of Transvaal’s United Party

The Transvaal Head Committee of the United Party, South Africa’s chief opposition party, is to investigate complaints that a well-known member of the Committee. Jack Dormehl, has been conducting an anti-Semitic campaign against the Party’s Transvaal leader, Harry Schwarz.

The complaint arises from a report in a recent issue of the Afrikaans Sunday paper, “Rapport,” which said that at the meeting which elected Schwarz as the new Transvaal leader of the Party some time ago, Dormehl vigorously opposed Schwarz’s nomination, and that in a heated scene later in the washroom at which the United Party’s leader, Sir de Villiers Graaff, and Schwarz were present, Dormehl called on Schwarz to withdraw his nomination, saying that “a Jew could not be chairman of the United Party in the Transvaal.”

In a statement on the report, Major J.D.R. Opperman, deputy general secretary of the United Party, accused the newspaper of exploiting the incident for political purposes. He said that it was true that Schwarz and Sir de Villiers Graaff had been confronted in the washroom to that effect by Dormehl, but they refused to be drawn into any argument and walked away.

Subsequently, at a meeting of the Head Committee, Schwarz offered to withdraw from nomination for the Transvaal leadership, “but had been given the go-ahead by the highest levels in the Party.” Dormehl has meanwhile been making press statements to the effect that he intends to continue opposing Schwarz’s leadership.

The Jewish Agency reported today that about 200 Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union have been stranded in Vienna by the El Al strike in Israel. The Agency said it was trying to arrange transportation for them on other airlines in order to clear the transit center for new arrivals from the USSR.