Off the bat, I admit it, I am no fan of Howard Feldman and ChaiFM. If you’re into over-privileged Jozi Jews. Do a google search and you’ll come up with the bizarre statistic that wait for it: “Most of the (live) Jews in Johannesburg can be found in the north-eastern suburbs. Here are some: Glenhazel, Raedene, Kew, Norwood, Highlands North, Sandringham, Savoy, Waverley, Orchards, Oaklands and Fairmount. Glenhazel and its immediate neighbours are jocularly referred to as ‘The Shtetl’.
I really do cringe when one realises that you’ll find Hebrews in equal parts in working class suburbs and industrial hubs of South Africa, places such as Gqeberha’s Motherwall community. Or that what is left of the Jews of District Six and Woodstock essentially charts a map of emigration and loss due to local Anti-Semitism that included political deportation of Jewish dissidents during apartheid.
Feldman’s narrative is anything but working class. His career as a ‘useful idiot’, (his phrase not mine), writing a column for News24 needs to be seen within a context, that for the most part, South Africa’s Jews, (black and white) are invisible, bar one or two lefties.
Allowing Naspers to say, ‘we employ Jews, so we can’t possibly be anti-Semitic’, whilst refusing to apologise for the antics of former directors, persons such as DF Malan who actively supported Nazism, carrying cards emblazoned with Swastikas, needs to be seen within the context of national reconciliation. The group along with its readers apparently moved on, as making money became more important than facts. I get the Machiavellian drive.
So one can forgive a sense of Schaudenfraude, seeing Howard on the receiving end of Adriaan Basson’s Anti-Semitic venom over a series of social media posts that Basson characterised as ‘glorification of violence’. Well hang me high, because I don’t see peace activists promoting peace amongst the throng of Hamas and Hezbollah supporters.
It does seem advocating total annihilation of the Jewish state is alright by Basson, but calling booby-trapped pagers ‘a stroke of genius’ isn’t? Does this make Feldman the “Mampara of the Week” ‘ a narcissistic bigot’ according to one Ferial Haffajee?
Readers may remember Haffajee as the imbecile who banned Medialternatives, physically destroying my review of ‘A Secret Burden: Memories of the Border War by South African Soldiers Who Fought in It‘ for wait for it, exposing embedded journalism within the apartheid military.
Since I am a peace activist not a war activist I don’t support the logic of either of the parties to the conflict. Like the late Dennis Brutus I don’t follow nation-states or people as such, but rather support ideas. And the paramount idea I wish readers would take home here is secularism, not the absence of religion as misguided atheists might put it, but rather the absence of religious rule.
READ: Africa4Palestine Says Sacking Of News24 Columnist Howard Feldman Was ‘Long Overdue
