CLOSE-UP
A home in a Jewish neighborhood in Johannesburg.
South Africa's Jews are torn
between their affluence and the
growing problems of apartheid
Walls and gates are becoming commonplace.
LILA ORBACH
Special to The Jewish News
J1
OHANNESBURG, South
Africa — It is winter now in
South Africa. But a winter's
day here is more like a
spring day in Michigan. The
sun is strong. And despite violent
media images transmitted around the
world, the scene in South Africa's
largest city looks more like Detroit or
Cleveland rather than Beirut or
Belfast.
Whites and blacks here are shar-
ing restaurants and restrooms. They
share the sidewalk, carrying shopping
bags, newspapers and briefcases. This
city, built on gold mines, is embellish-
ed with highrises, traffic jams and
business suits.
The scene is symbolic, for it gives
signs of the acceptance and the ur-
banization of the blacks in South
Africa and of the steady and
undeniable change taking place here.
But in a way, this scene is
misleading.
For in this country, where a
minority of five million whites still
24
FRIDAY, AUGUST 5, 1988
have rule over 28 million blacks and
"coloureds" (Indians and people of
mixed race), some things remain .
frightfully the same.
Eighteen years since the
Sharpeville massacre and 12 years
since the Soweto riots, incidents that
woke the world to the oppression of
South Africa's non-whites, unrest still
rocks the non-white areas. Violence is
commonplace. But due to the strict
press curbs instituted under the coun-
try's state of emergency regulations,
the world hears next to nothing.
While change, South Africans say,
is imminent, it arrives in waves, ebbs
and tides that slowly reach every cor-
ner of the country.
A
glimpse at the life of the
Jews of South Africa
shows a community brac-
ing for this change. There
is no one response to the
boiling political situation, and the
Jews react in different ways. The
scene in the Jewish community varies
from a Jewish South African soldier
proud to fight for his country to a
lonely Jewish mother, pining for her
three children who have uprooted and
resettled in Melbourne, London and
Thronto.
While it is difficult to draw con-
clusions from random interviews, it is
clear South Africa's Jewish communi-
ty is both holding on and letting go.
They are a strong and tight-knit
community, these South African
Jews. And they have made their mark
on every facet of society. They own
food chains and pharmacies; they are
mayors, parliament leaders, musi-
cians .and scientists. They are suc-
cessful. But their fortune and future
are in question. In an uncertain
political climate, one feels the ten-
sions and the fear in most households.
There's a sense that one of these days
things are going to explode.
Of the estimated 120,000 Jews in
South-Africa, some venture that as
many as 20,000 have left.
"You live in total fear here," said
Carla Zimmerman, 22, of Johan-
nesburg, whose family, like many in
the northern suburbs, lives locked
behind security bars. "You're closed
up here. You're behind high walls and
alarms. We live with our comforts and
luxuries and shove troubles to the
back of our minds. But imagine that
I won't be able to get out. What if I
get trapped here? That's always on my
mind."
Behind high walls, barbed wire
and 24-hour security systems (built as
a result of a growing crime rate
associated with the depressed
economy as opposed to fear of racial
attacks), are magnificent homes, ser-
vants, well-kept gardens and swimm-
ing pools. Here people live, luxurious-
ly, in one of the most physically
beautiful countries anywhere. Many
Jews living in South Africa, especial-
ly those with grown children, have no
intention of giving it up.
"Apartheid is gone. Discrimina-
tion is gone. All that's over," said Sol-
ly Berman, a Johannesburg
businessman quite comfortable in his
stately home atop a ridge overlooking
Johannesburg. "The world doesn't
know that because they don't want to
know?'
Looking at the street scene in
Johannesburg, one may believe that
apartheid is finished. However, the
foundation stones of this system of