Kenneth Mokgatlhe
Mensches in the Trenches: Jewish Footsoldiers in the Anti-Apartheid Struggle by Jonathan Ancer is a new book entirely devoted to lesser-known or discussed struggle heroes during the liberation movement against the apartheid regime.
Ancer, an award-winning journalist and author, directly converses with those heroes and heroines who are less or not acknowledged for their role in defeating apartheid and white minority rule. What is intriguing is that most of those who feature in the book are themselves white, yet they took a stand to fight against what they thought was immorally unjustifiable.
This book does justice to these unsung activists by reminding the reader about the role played by lesser-known figures who helped to liberate humankind.
While everyone will concur that it would be all but impossible to narrate and include the role played by everyone against the apartheid regime, what this book does is specifically focus on the role played in that regard by members of South Africa’s Jewish community.
As a result of the historical conflict between black and white people, the relationship between the two groups is always characterised by much distrust, especially by blacks, who always suspect that their white counterparts have ulterior motives.
This book, however, tells a different story about relations between black and white in South Africa. Although the system of racial oppression has always been perpetrated by white people, there has always been a minority of whites who were prepared to sacrifice their comfort by fighting against the oppression of black people.
Identical twins Norman and Leon Levy championed the human rights campaign throughout their lives. They had a choice of ignoring the injustice of the white minority ruling over the black majority, but their conscience guided them otherwise. Many white people kept quiet and enjoyed the benefits of the oppression that was unleashed against every black person but a few, like the Levy brothers, fought against it. The twins’ involvement can be traced back to the SA Communist Party, which has always been allied with the ANC.
While others took the fight to the street and organised workers in the factories that exploited black labour, Fanny Klenerman started the Vanguard Bookshop. This magnificent centre of knowledge, which opened on April 17, 1931, was situated in Johannesburg’s Eloff Street for a number of years until its demise in the late 1960s after it had moved out to Commissioner Street to be next to the (then in-construction) Carlton Centre.
The Vanguard Bookshop specialised in revolutionary, socialist-oriented content. Activist Baruch Hirson wrote: “This was more than a shop - it was a forum for informed political ideas, and also for the latest currents in philosophy, literature, and art.”
Percy Tucker, the man who invented Computicket, demonstrated that fighting oppression can also take an artistic performance in the theatre. Tucker’s fusion with the likes of Mirriam Makeba, Abdulla Ibrahim, Hugh Masekela, and others produced ‘King Kong', the classic township afro-jazz musical that celebrated the smoky sounds of the sax and the sharp sound of the penny whistle.
‘King Kong’ came as a result of a meeting between Jewish philanthropists Clive and Irene Menell and their friend, composer Todd Matshikiza. ‘King Kong’ demonstrated a strong symbol of ties between black and white people both in theatre and in fighting oppression by the white minority. This resulted in the abolition of legislation segregating people in theatres on March 11, 1978.
Advocate Denis Kuny is one of the few human rights lawyers who represented ordinary people against oppressive white minority government during apartheid. Some of the cases where he represented the oppressed are well known; others did not make it into the limelight. Among the defence in the Rivonia Trial were Denis Kuny, Bram Fischer, Arthur Chaskalson, Vernon Berrange, Joel Joffe and George Bizos.
Kuny did not only defend members of the ANC or SACP, but went further than that, representing Black Consciousness activist Dr Mamphele Ramphele, members of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), and the ‘Nusas 5’ (university students and a lecturer accused of treason). Kuny devoted more than half of his life fighting for justice, but few people know of him, especially outside legal circles.
All the lesser-known struggle heroes and heroines in this book could have kept quiet and enjoyed the benefits of the previous apartheid regime, but they chose instead to oppose the ill-treatment of the black majority people in South Africa and gave various kinds of support to black people and organisations to defeat apartheid. A lesson to be learned from this book is the significance of unity and cohesion, something we should embrace in current South Africa.
*Kenneth Mokgatlhe is a Journalist, political and social commentator