Just one day before the close of the secular year, a total of
38 graves in the Strand and Pineland Jewish cemeteries of
Cape Town were vandalized. The attacks received widespread
media coverage and were roundly condemned by local religious
leaders, although subsequent investigation has suggested that
the extent of the damage was exaggerated.
Since then, there were several more antisemitic incidents in
the country, raising uneasy questions as to whether the
worldwide upsurge in anti-Jewish activity has at last reached
South Africa.
Particularly disturbing was the receipt by five different
institutions of a threatening letter in which an unidentified
white powder was enclosed. The letters were allegedly sent by
a local cell of the far-right British grouping Combat 18, the
armed wing of the Neo-Nazi organization Blood and Honor. They
were received by the three branches of King David School,
Johannesburg's main Jewish day school system, as well as by
the Jewish Board of Deputies and the Killarney Mall, a
shopping center frequented by Jews.
Combat 18 has a history of carrying out violent attacks
against racial minorities and is openly pro-Nazi and
antisemitic. The text of the letter accused the jews (sic) of
having for too long "tormented the white race" and warned
that the Jews of South Africa would "now be crushed." The
inclusion of white powder was reminiscent of the
international anthrax scare that followed the September 11,
2001 terrorist attacks, although in this case the powder
turned out to be harmless. All five letters were handed over
to the Bomb Squad for further investigation.
In other incidents, a Jewish teenager was reportedly
subjected to antisemitic abuse before being violently
assaulted by an unidentified black man whilst walking home
from school. That same day, antisemitic graffiti was found
written outside the gate of a Jewish nursery school in
Johannesburg.
While the above occurrences have caused some concern,
antisemitism on the whole continues at a relatively low level
in South Africa. Only forty incidents were reported in all of
2002, as opposed to over 600 in Australia, a community of
comparable size, and where many former South Africans have
since made their homes.
The most serious single incident last year took place in
September, when four Jewish youths had an altercation with
several colored men at a petrol station and were afterwards
pursued and shot at. One of the youths was slightly injured
by flying glass when the back window of their vehicle was
shattered by gunfire.
