Geoff Sifrin
Taking Issue
Last Sunday’s funeral of advocate, activist and Jewish leader Jules Browde who died at age 98, radiated this ethos. It was infused with both idealism and his characteristic sense of humour. Sad as a good man’s passing is, the feeling was of a life well lived.
Johannesburg Mayor Parks Tau attended with an honour guard of men and women in city uniforms to accompany the coffin to the grave. He spoke about the importance of uprightness among city officials and Browde’s role in its integrity committee, helping over 200 councillors ensure their financial affairs complied with regulations.
Officially, Browde was a city employee – he did not believe in retirement, and still had several months to complete his contract. The city offered him the first five-year contract when he was in his late 80s despite him saying because of age he might not complete it. But he saw it through, and was offered new contracts.
In a moving scene after the Jewish ceremony at the graveside, city workers and dignitaries filled the grave. Mourners included Constitutional Court judges, legal figures, artists, activists, Habonim youth movement leaders – he was its national president for 25 years – and ordinary folk.
The serenity of a worthy life completed. There were no political speeches, cries of “amandla!” or political party representatives with thuggish red overalls, intense T-shirts in blue, red, green or black. No point-scoring or jostling for power.
Browde’s friendship in apartheid’s early years with liberation icons and lawyers Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela was mentioned by the rabbi: “Today everyone likes to say they knew Mandela; but at that time, to be a friend of Mandela was not popular in white society.”
He was a founding member of Lawyers for Human Rights in 1980, then its chairman during the State of Emergency. After democracy, President Mandela appointed him to investigate irregularities in appointment of certain public officials. His other honours are too many to list here.
True to his ethos, several women participated in the act of shovelling earth onto the coffin which, although contrary to this Jewish community’s custom, was entirely natural – the rabbis did not stir.
When it came to the family saying kaddish, his wife of 68 years, Selma, participated with her sons. Again, entirely natural, though not the usual custom. For Browde, no-one would be excluded.
There was a special quality to Browde’s generation, moulded by the Second World War struggle against Hitler in which he fought for five and a half years, South African Jewry’s flourishing, anti-apartheid activism, and idealism for a new, humane state of Israel. They were natural partners to the likes of giants like Mandela and Tambo.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the SA Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was intended to heal many wounds of apartheid. But the country stands at a dangerous crossroad: Will it continue its descent onto chaos and cynicism, or regain the idealism of Mandela’s rainbow nation vision?
It also marks 49 years since Israel’s Six Day War, in which a still idealistic Israel defended itself against invading Arab armies – but which also resulted in Israel becoming an occupier of another people, which today is tearing at the society’s moral fabric.
South Africa desperately needs the integrity of people like Browde to counteract the vitriol as this confused country tries to find its way. Will the wave of corruption, patronage and power-mongering lead downwards to what is beginning to feel like a fascist state?
Hopefully, the pendulum will swing back and leaders will emerge with the good of the country at heart, rather than their own pockets and personal power.
Read Geoff Sifrin’s regular columns on his blog sifrintakingissue.wordpress.com
