‘Fringing’ – a new word for an old problem

I’m inventing a new word today. Right here, in this column. 

I don’t often coin new terms, but when the dictionary fails us, someone has to step in. 

The word is “fringing”. 

Fringing (verb): The act of pushing a person or group from the centre of society to its outer edges – politically, socially, professionally, or culturally – until they no longer feel they belong. 

There. It’s official. 

Call Merriam-Webster and the Oxford people! 

Because this is what’s happening to Jews in South Africa and around the world right now. 

Fringing is cumulative. It isn’t something that happens in one big moment. It isn’t a single headline or violent outburst. It happens in small, creeping steps. 

It’s a WhatsApp group that you are suddenly no longer welcome in; a medical conference you’re quietly uninvited from. It’s a media platform that says, “You’re too complicated. Too Jewish. Too outspoken.” 

Ask me how I know. Or maybe ask News24. 

Fringing works exactly because it seems minor and almost petty. It doesn’t look like discrimination or antisemitism. Instead, it’s framed as “protecting sensitivities”; “avoiding controversy”; or “maintaining neutrality”. 

But the effect is the same – pushed off the stage; away from the microphone; off the sport’s field; out of the frame, and into the wings. Onto the fringe. 

In South Africa, fringing has become a socio-political sport. 

Jews are being fringed in media spaces, academic spaces, medical spaces, cultural spaces, and social spaces. Not because of anything we’ve done, but because of who we are and what we believe. 

Jews who support Israel – which is to say most Jews – are now told that their very identity makes them problematic, unwelcome, or suspicious. 

You can be a doctor, lawyer, journalist, engineer, mother, father, teacher, shop-owner, but the minute you’re recognisably Jewish and pro-Israel, your seat at the table becomes conditional. You get fringed. 

And now, at the end of 2025, comes the biggest attempt yet with the so-called “Apartheid Bill”. 

The draft Bill introduced by the Al Jama-ah party claims to be about prosecuting supporters of apartheid. 

Fine. 

Except that apartheid is already recognised as a crime under both South African law and international law. We don’t need a new Bill to prosecute it. We already have the Rome Statute domesticated into our legislation. 

Which means that this Bill must be about something else. It’s about the fringing of Jews. It’s aimed squarely at anyone who supports Israel. 

If enacted, it would make basic Jewish life: religious giving; community support; and cultural solidarity legally risky. It would push Jews “underground”; create fear about communal expression; and prioritise political ideology over religious freedom. 

In other words, like the infamous Nuremberg Laws, it fringes Jews by law. 

And once you legislate fringing, history has shown us what comes next. 

South African Jews have always been proudly engaged in this country in business, media, science, law, medicine, and philanthropy. We didn’t place ourselves on the fringe. We are being pushed there. 

Not with violence. Not (yet) with exclusionary laws. But with a series of “small”, deniable acts. 

But here’s the thing about fringing, it ends when we refuse to be pushed there. The answer to fringing is visibility. It’s participation. It’s community. It’s refusing to apologise for being who we are. 

Jews aren’t guests in South Africa. 

We helped to build this country. We continue to serve it. And we refuse to be painted out of the picture. 

Fringing succeeds only when those who are placed on the fringe accept it quietly. 

We will not. Not now. Not ever.