Jozi shows us who we really are

On Sunday morning, as thousands walked through our beloved, battered but still beautiful Jozi, something happened that we can’t take for granted. Or perhaps it wasn’t extraordinary at all. Perhaps it was simply South Africa as it is. 

Members of our community walked alongside everyone else in the 702 Jozi My Jozi Walk the Talk, the event that returned to the heart of Johannesburg on 26 July, inviting Gauteng communities to reclaim the streets. 

Many wore T-shirts with “Jews 4 Jozi” emblazoned proudly across their backs. They didn’t hide. They didn’t whisper. They didn’t make themselves smaller to soothe anyone else’s discomfort. They walked as Jews, Joburgers, and South Africans. 

And nobody badgered them. They were part of the greater Johannesburg community, as we have always been. They were included in the greater Johannesburg dysfunctional family. 

It made me proud. Proud of our community for showing up. Proud of the kind of South Africa that still exists beneath the shouting, political opportunism, and poisonous noise. 

Let’s face it, visible Jewishness around the world is no longer uncomplicated. In London, New York, parts of Canada, and Australia, Jews may think twice about walking in public with any overtly Jewish paraphernalia visible on them. If they did, they might expect abuse, filming, screaming, or worse. In too many supposedly enlightened places, being openly Jewish now comes with a risk assessment. 

So when Johannesburg gives us a morning like Sunday, we should recognise what it means. It tells us that ordinary people in this city aren’t the ones driving the hatred. The person walking next to us, pushing a pram, laughing with friends, or trying to keep up with a teenager, doesn’t see us as the enemy at all. 

And yet, in the very same week, we publish a story about Dr Imtiaz Sooliman and an organisation with an almost comically ironic name, The Coalition for Good. It is pressuring retailers to stop stocking anything to do with Israel. Its intention doesn’t appear to be to argue about it, or persuade, but rather to frighten people into succumbing to its “request”. To bully businesses into proving their so-called virtue by cutting off anything connected to the Jewish State. 

How noble. This is the work of so-called humanitarians. People draped in the language of goodness while deciding what the rest of us may buy, sell, stock, support, or be connected to. They say it’s about Israel not antisemitism. But what they do or don’t realise – who knows anymore? – is that most Jews are connected to Israel. It is part of our DNA, history, religion, family story, prayers, trauma, and hope. 

Even if we wanted to disconnect from Israel – and we don’t – we couldn’t. We can rage about Israeli politics and disagree fiercely about its leaders, policy, war, courts, and almost everything else. We do, constantly. But Israel isn’t a political hobby Jews picked up at university. It is woven into us. 

So when activists demand that retailers remove anything linked to Israel, they are also telling Jews that our connection is unacceptable. Our identity must be sanitised. Our history is inconvenient. Our grief is irrelevant. Our attachment to the Jewish homeland must be punished in the supermarket aisle. 

Businesses, it seems, are in for more bullying from these self-appointed guardians of morality. One wonders why tactics of intimidation so often dress themselves up as humanitarian concern. There should be discomfort when people claim the moral high ground while using pressure to crush choice, debate, and nuance. 

Another story in this week’s publication about this feverish anti-Israel sentiment, which will also spill into hostility towards Jews, concerns the race for Johannesburg mayor. The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has announced Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng as its candidate. She is a medical doctor and the outgoing United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to health. The possible African National Congress (ANC) candidate is Reverend Frank Chikane, a veteran activist. 

Neither of their résumés screams “I can run a city”. Johannesburg isn’t a seminar, a pulpit, a rally, or a United Nations platform. It is a broken, complicated, neglected city that needs the unglamorous work of governance. It needs someone who is going to put their nose to the grindstone and sort out water, electricity, roads, refuse removal, billing systems, and infrastructure. It, or should I say we, desperately need a leader who knows municipal government isn’t a stage for ideological theatre. 

And yet the ANC and the EFF seem to favour those who publicly express hostility towards Israel, which is so far from Jozi. Severe criticism of the Jewish State somehow becomes a credential in certain parties’ politics. As if fixing potholes requires taking a position on Israel. As if restoring water supply depends on one’s view of Zionism. As if traffic lights will suddenly work if the Jewish State is denounced loudly enough. 

G-d help us if either Mofokeng or Chikane becomes mayor. Actually, we have had mayors with hardline ideological views before, and they did nothing particularly bad to us as Jews. But they did nothing good for the city either. Like so many mayors and leaders over the past decades, they presided over the decline, drift, and decay, and did nothing. 

Our city is collapsing in front of us, and some who are poised to lead it appear more excited about their hatred of Israel than any desire to fix Johannesburg. And when Jews object, we are told not to worry, that antizionism has nothing to do with antisemitism, that this is all justice. Forgive us if we don’t applaud. 

Because we know how this works. First, it is Israel. Then Israeli products. The line keeps moving, and somehow we are always told we are imagining it. 

But Sunday’s walk told another story. It reminded me that the loudest voices aren’t the majority. The people issuing threats, launching campaigns, shouting slogans, and seeking office on the back of fashionable hatred don’t represent the soul of this city. 

Could it be that Jozi, in spite of everything, remains more inclusive than we fear? Could it be that the best of its people understand that Jews are part of this place, not guests to be tolerated? 

Sunday didn’t erase the hatred. It didn’t make the bullying disappear. It didn’t mean we can relax our vigilance or pretend antisemitism isn’t mutating in ugly and dangerous ways. But it gave us a glimpse of something worth holding onto: a Johannesburg where Jews can walk openly, proudly, and safely; where we can be fully Jewish and South African. 

That matters. In a world in which Jews are increasingly made to hide or sever ourselves from Israel to be acceptable, Jozi gave us a different message. It said, “Walk. Be seen. Be proud. You belong here.” Thank you, Jozi! 

Shabbat Shalom! 

Peta Krost 

Editor