The Jewish community here has expressed concern over an ambiguous reply given by the Minister of Lands, Hendrik Schoeman, to a questioner at a recent political meeting in Volksrust who asked what the Minister’s attitude was to “Jews buying up the land of Afrikaner farmers.”
Schoeman said in the course of his reply that it was “sad that the Afrikaner sells his land to companies–I will not say to Jews, because there is a newspaperman who is writing it all down–I agree we must watch this,” Schoeman added, however, that he knew of 24 cases in which Jewish land owners were bought out by Afrikaners.
The South African Jewish Times noted in a subsequent editorial that while Schoeman attempted to turn the tables on his questioner, his reply was not sufficiently direct. “He should have told the meeting bluntly that he was not prepared to tolerate racialistic remarks about Jews or any other section of the population,” the paper said. It added that “by and large, South African public life is reasonably free, these days, from anti-Semitism, and Government and Opposition alike seem determined to keep it so.”
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