Paradoxical ambiguity – D.F. Malan and the “Jewish Question”

Abstract

This paper explores D.F. Malan’s attitudes towards the Jews in the context of burgeoning Afrikaner nationalism and the challenge of the radical right in the 1930s and 1940s. Beginning with the Quota Act of 1930, Malan increasingly expressed hostility towards Jews. Fuelled by opposition towards German-Jewish immigration and subsequently calling for limitations on Jewish occupations and opportunities in South Africa, Malan denied any anti-Jewish animus. Yet his rhetoric was increasingly shrill through the 1930s. Was Malan simply an opportunist or was he genuinely hostile? While opportunism was a feature of his political style, and while some of his attacks were in all likelihood politically driven, too often he appeared consumed by imaginary Jewish machinations. Nevertheless, it needs to be acknowledged that Malan turned away from the “Jewish Question” soon after World War II and refused to kowtow to those wishing to maintain anti-Jewish policies.

Keywords:

• D.F. Malan
• antisemitism
• radical right
• Hoggenheimer
• Quota Act
• Aliens Act
• South African Jewish Board of Deputies
• United Party
• Gesuiwerde (Purified) National Party
• Louis Weichardt
• volkisch Afrikaner nationalism
• Die Waarheid/The Truth
• Stuttgart
• unassimilability
• Jan Hofmeyr
• Eric Louw
• Herenigde Nasionale of Volksparty
• Oswald Pirow
• Nuwe Orde
• Lindie Koorts

UNPUBLISHED ARCHIVAL SOURCES

Special Collections, University of Cape Town.

“Programme of Principles of the National Party of South Africa”, in The National Party of the Cape Province. Programme of Principles, National Party, Cape Town, Special Collections, University of Cape Town.

Archives for Contemporary Affairs. University of the Free State, Bloemfontein.

National Party Transvaal, PV 2, File 3–3.

Eric Louw Collection, PV4, File 2.

Manuscript Section, J S Gericke Library, Stellenbosch University.

D.F. Malan Collection.

S.A. Rochlin Archives, South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Johannesburg.

Press Reports, 1930–1948.

South African Jewish Board of Deputies: Report to Executive Committee for the period December 1929 to November 30^th, 1931 S.A. Rochlin Archives, South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Johannesburg.

South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Executive Committee Minutes, 23 and 29 November, 1931.

The National Archives, Public Records Office, London.

High Commissioner (South Africa Papers), Foreign Office, 371; 372.

PUBLISHED SOURCES

Government Publications Department, Chancellor Oppenheimer Library, University of Cape Town.

Aliens Bill, South African Government Gazette Extraordinary Bill No 2400, 28 December 1936.

Hansard (House of Assembly Debates)

Newspapers/Journals

Die Burger, The Cape, Cape Standard, Cape Times, Daily Express, Daily Representative, East London Daily Dispatch, Eastern Province Herald, The Friend, Jewish Affairs, New Era, The Owl, Rand Daily Mail, South African Jewish Chronicle (SAJC), South African Jewish Times, The Star, Sunday Express, Sunday Times, Sunday Tribune, Die Transvaler, Die Vaderland, Die Volksblad, Zionist Record.

Notes

1 For the origins of Hoggenheimer, see Shain, 1994: 62–63.

2 For Abraham Kuyper and “Kuyperianism” see Elphick, 2012, chapter 15, passim; Bloomberg, 1990: 10–12; Dubow, 1995. 

3 Both the English and Afrikaans press greeted the immigration restriction initiative with affirmation. “The Bill will commend itself to most citizens of the Union and has not been introduced a day too soon”, noted an editorial in East London's Daily Dispatch that perhaps best captured the public mood. See, for example, the East London Daily Dispatch, 3 February 1930. For further indications of support see Die Burger, 30 January 1930; Sunday Times, 2 February 1930; The Cape, 7 February 1930 and the Daily Representative, 3 February 1930.

4 An organization aimed at garnering the support of workers and farmers against the National Party.

5 According to the South African Jewish Chronicle (27 November, 1931) the Jews of the North West Districts numbered a mere 643 souls out of a total population of 52 581. Six years later, Malan told Maria Louw, his future wife, that Jews would not be as useful to Steenkamp in the wake of the fusion of the South African Party and the National Party. See D.F. Malan to Maria Louw (shortly before their marriage on 20 December 1937). Maria Malan Supplement, D.F. Malan Collection, No. 1 KG67/347/31.

6 Malan's comments threatened to become a national political issue: the interview certainly provided good copy for opponents of the Nationalists. The Star (3 November 1931) best encapsulated their outrage in an editorial that castigated the Minister for threatening “Jews as a class with an official anti-Semitic programme if they do not support the Nationalist Party.” The Johannesburg daily was unable to recall “a cruder piece of class animus or a more undignified and improper ministerial attitude in all the chequered annals of South Africa.” In similar vein, The Friend described Malan's warning as “political blackmail”, contending that such a statement could “only be construed as an attempt to buy off political opposition by threats of reprisals from the Government in power … Since when has it been a crime, punishable with dire penalties, ‘to fight the Nationalists,’ as Dr Malan puts it, by constitutional means?” The Friend, 4 November 1931.

7 W.P. Louw to S. Raphaely, 12 November 1931. D.F. Malan Collection, 1/1/915. For full text of the meeting see S. Raphaely to D.F. Malan, 6 November 1931. D.F. Malan Collection, 1/1/914; and South African Jewish Board of Deputies: Report to Executive Committee for the period December 1929 to November 30^th, 1931, and South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Executive Committee Minutes, 23 and 29 November 1931, S.A. Rochlin Archives.

8 With regard to The Riddle of the Jew's Success, Malan's Private Secretary said the Minister had only made “a cursory review of its contents” and had “not read the book complained of, and on its merits and demerits he therefore did not and could not pass judgment”. See W.H. Louw to S. Raphaely, 12 November 1931. D.F. Malan Collection, 1/1/915. For full text see SAJC, 27 November 1931.

9 For growing hostility towards Jews, see Shain, 2015: 24–26. By way of example, an anti-Jewish leaflet “The Farmer and the Jew” was distributed in the Kroonstad district and stickers defaming Jews were placed in library books in Cape Town. See South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Executive Committee Minutes, 29 November 1931, S.A. Rochlin Archives.

10 Malan was opposed in his own constituency by Antonetta Steenkamp, wife of his Namaqualand bête noir. The Nationalists won 75 of the 150 parliamentary seats, the South African Party 61. See Koorts, 2014, 264ff.

11 Nicolaas (Nico) van der Merwe, Member of Parliament for Winberg, Charles Robberts “Blackie” Swart, Member of Parliament for Ladybrand, and Johannes Gerhardus (Hans) Strijdom, Member of Parliament for Waterberg.

12 The merger was also unacceptable for the mainly Natal-based and English-speaking devolutionists in the South African Party. They formed the pro-Empire Dominion Party, under Colonel Charles Stallard in October 1934.

13 For fears of an alliance between the “Jewish Peril” and the “Black Peril”, see Visser, 2004.

14 The Communist Party of South Africa had even begun publishing an Afrikaans monthly, Die Arbeiter en Arme Boer (Worker and Peasant), in January 1935 in an effort to attract Afrikaner members.

15 From time to time the Asian or Indian trader was also identified in negative terms.

16 For the emergence and spread of radical right activity, see Furlong, 1991, chapters one and two, and Shain, 2015, chapters two and three, passim.

17 See van Deventer, 1991, 58–59 and South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Executive Minutes, 14 and 25 April 1937, S.A. Rochlin Archives, and SAJC, 23 April 1937.

18 See Bradlow, 1978 and Peberdy, 2009.

19 See D.F. Malan to Amice, 9 December 1936. Eric Louw Collection. PV4, File 2.

20 Aliens Bill, South African Government Gazette Extraordinary Bill No 2400, 28 December 1936. For this special recognition of Yiddish, see Shain, 1983, chapter two, passim.

21 The Cape Committee of the Board met with Stuttaford on 18 January 1937 to discuss the definition of assimilability within the guidelines of the Bill and the possibilities for appeal. He made it clear that their concerns had been considered in cabinet and it had been agreed that any changes would open them up for attacks from the Malanites. See Bradlow, 1978, 287.

22 Greg Cuthbertson claims that Hofmeyr had drafted the Bill long before Malan's Bill was introduced at the end of 1936. This was confirmed by Stuttaford during the debate. See Hansard, 12 January 1937 and Cuthbertson, 1981: 119.

23 See Shain, 1994, chapter six, passim. The idealisation of the Nordic race, or “Nordicism,” had a long pedigree with strong ties to racial anthropology, Romantic “folk” nationalism and, from the late nineteenth century, to European racism. With race underpinning its categorisation, “Nordicism” was connected in complicated ways with “Aryanism” and European fascism, especially Nazism. Within this Weltanschauung, Jews were a people apart from the “Nordic” peoples and an ever-present threat. See Hutton, 2005, chapter seven, passim.

24 See South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Executive Committee Minutes, 28 February 1937, S.A. Rochlin Archives.

25 The notion of Jews blocking the advance of Afrikaners was a common theme. See Moodie, 1975, 129.

26 See South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Executive Committee Minutes, 29 August 1937, S.A. Rochlin Archives.

27 W.H. Clark, High Commissioner to the Right Honourable Malcolm Macdonald, M.P., Dominion Office, 27 August 1937. Foreign Office, 372, The National Archives, London.

28 South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Executive Committee Minutes, 8 November 1937, S.A. Rochlin Archives.

29 Ibid, 28 November 1937.

30 However, in the early twentieth century there had been an outburst against the Jewish newcomers. See The Owl, 21 January 1905.

31 See also South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Executive Committee Minutes, 30 January 1938, S.A. Rochlin Archives.

32 See South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Executive Committee Minutes, 6 March 1938, S.A. Rochlin Archives.

33 Sunday Tribune, 4 September 1938 and Sunday Express, 4 September 1938. The shelving of the already drafted bill, suggested the two newspapers, “was a confession that an anti-Semitic policy is doomed to failure in South Africa”.

34 SAJC, 28 October 1938. The Nationalist press, according to the SAJC, had a slightly different version of speech which concluded: “Unless we get another Government than the present one which is under the thumb of the Jews and coloureds – it is they who are in great measure responsible for the victory of the Government in the general elections – I see a dark future for South Africa.” See also Daily Express, 17 October 1938. Malan had originally used the phrase “like a sieve hung out to stop the east wind from blowing” at a National Party Transvaal Congress Party in 1936. See NP Transvaal, PV 2, File 3-3.

35 See, for example, the clash at the Germiston Town Hall between white mineworkers and the fascist Blackshirts. The Star, 4 August 1938.

36 See Daily Express, 30 September 1938.

37 Die Transvaler (30 November 1938) deplored suggestions of Nationalist involvement.

38 SAJC, 11 November, 1938. See also Van Heerden, 1972: 112.

39 In fact numbers had dwindled. In 1936, the high point of German-Jewish immigration, 3330 Jews had entered the country; in 1937, 954; and in 1938, 566. See Peberdy, 2009: 65.

40 In his speech Malan wondered what the difference was between Jews and the Indians, the latter not being allowed to immigrate to South Africa.

41 According to the British High Commissioner, W.H. Clark, the term was taken directly from the German propaganda station at Zeesen. See Dispatch from High Commissioner in the Union of South Africa for His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. Dispatch 91/279, 19 October 1939. Foreign Office, 371, The National Archives, London.

42 Clearly on the defensive and needing to placate burgeoning Afrikaner radicalism and its republican impulses, Malan told a Smithfield audience during a by-election that seven-eighths of Pirow's Nuwe Orde had been incorporated in the HNP's “Programme of Action”. He did not, however, agree with Pirow's call for an immediate break with democracy. See Die Burger, 13 March 1941.

43 See also, Die Transvaler, 24 and 25 June 1941 and Die Burger, 21 January 1943.

44 It should be noted that it was not only the HNP and Radical Right that feared Bolshevism. As early as 1934, Smuts equated Bolshevism with Nazism and Fascism. See Filatova and Davidson, 2013: 165.

45 See also South African Jewish Board of Deputies. Report of Executive Council, August 1942–May 1945.

46 Cited in Vatcher, 1965: 70.

47 The Draft Constitution was never approved by an HNP Congress. See Furlong, 1991: 186–189.

48 The Rand Daily Mail (20 March 1943) even reported that the HNP planned to win Jewish support. Yet Malan was at times happy to pander to anti-Jewish rhetoric in public. When complaining about the cost of war and being told by someone in the audience that “the Jews will have to pay”, he replied that the United Party government would “see to it that they do not pay”. Eastern Province Herald, 27 May 1943. When asked during an address in Heilbron whether it was not the Jews who had given the world Christianity, Malan replied instead that it was they who had crucified Christ. See Die Volksblad, 3 July 1943.

49 See also the New Era, 3 May 1945.

50 See also the Zionist Record, 2, 9 and 13 May 1947.

51 See van Heerden, 1972: 381.

52 D.F. Malan to J. Nossel, 6 February 1947, DF Malan Papers: 1/1/2225. See also the South African Jewish Times, 14 February 1947 and van Heerden, 1972: 381.

53 Hansard, 14 February 1947

54 We have no records of this but Louw had clearly upset some colleagues with his letter.

55 E.H. Louw to D.F. Malan, 26 October 1947, 1/1/2337, D.F. Malan Collection.

56 See also “Editorial”, Jewish Affairs, November 1947.

57 That there were indeed serious differences of opinion on the part of the Transvaal leaders as regards the “Jewish Question” is illustrated by exchanges between J.G. Strijdom and F. Erasmus. Strijdom took exception to assertions made by Erasmus at a National Party “Information” meeting that the Party did not discriminate against Jews who were already in South Africa, and that Malan's declaration in Die Burger was in line with Party policy. See Shain, 2015: 280–281.

58 Malan predicted during the election campaign that the next war would be fought against communism and South Africa would support the anti-communist forces. See Koorts, 2014: 377.

59 Gus Saron, “After the election”, Jewish Affairs, June, 1948: 9.

60 See Jewish Affairs, July 1948: 2; Shimoni, 1980: 207 and South African Jewish Board of Deputies. Report of the Executive Council, August 1947–May 1949, S.A. Rochlin Archives.

61 See.Koorts, 2014: 311.

62 W.H. Clark to the Right Honourable Malcolm Macdonald, M.P., Dominion Office, 21 January 1936 [sic], Foreign Office, 372, The National Archives, London. The date 1936 was an error and should have been 1937 as evident from the discussion. As Clark put it some months later, Malan was cagey about revealing his policy as regards Jews or communists, and as a result one was left with the impression that “his stirring up of prejudice, White against Black, Christian against Jew, Fascist against Communist, is merely a device to embarrass the Government by playing upon divisions of opinion which naturally exist.” See W.H. Clark, High Commissioner to the Right Honourable Malcolm Macdonald, M.P., Dominion Office, 13 August 1937, Public Records Office, Foreign office, 371. The National Archives, London. 

63 W.H. Clark to the Right Honourable Malcolm Macdonald, M.P., Dominion Office, 31 December 1936, Public Records Office 372. The National Archives.

64 van Deventer, 1991: 258, n.12. For Wiehl, see Cohen, 2014: 148–149. Ben Schoeman, a former colleague, suggested that Malan was afraid of having his party labelled anti-Jewish but nevertheless allowed the Transvaal to formally discriminate against Jews. See Schoeman, 1978: 131.

65 ‘Notes on Interview with Prime Minister’, 25 November 1937 (written by M. Franks). See South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Executive Committee Minutes, 8 November 1937, S.A. Rochlin Archives.

66 See Shain, 2015: 172–175. An editorial in Die Transvaler (3 November 1937) made it clear that the breakdown arose over the Fascist and Nazi mindset of the Greyshirts with an emphasis on the Leader.

67 See South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Executive Committee Minutes, 31 October 1937, S.A. Rochlin Archives.

68 “The Party recognises the sovereignty and guidance of the Almighty God and seeks the development of our national life along Christian-national lines”. See “Programme of Principles of the National Party of South Africa”, in The National Party of the Cape Province. Programme of Principles, National Party, Cape Town, Special Collections, University of Cape Town. It is perhaps because of Article One that some claimed the Orange Free State joined the Transvaal in precluding Jewish membership. Malan actually told a meeting some time later that Jews were not allowed to join the Orange Free State National Party. See Malan's comments, Rand Daily Mail, 28 April 1938. It was also reported that the Natal Congress of the HNP reolved that Jews could not become members of the Party in Natal. See Die Vaderland, 9 January 1941.

69 For another example see his speech at Porterville Die Volksblad, 21 October 1936. See also, Cape Argus, 8 October 1936 and Die Volksblad, 23 October 1936. In an interview with a “coloured” newspaper, the Cape Standard (19 October 1935), he made it clear that South Africa's “racial troubles” will be aggravated by “letting in more Jews”. 

70 Here I am referring to the work of Gavin Langmuir who defines antisemitism as delusional fantasies about the Jews as opposed to anti-Judaism which he argues is rational disagreement about Jewish texts and understandings. See Langmuir, 1990: 4–6.

71 Koorts, 2014: 314.

72 For Verwoerd's editorial endeavours see Prinsloo, 1979.

73 Abrahams, 1955: xii–xiii. With great irony, Abrahams (p. xvi) expressed his appreciation for “the deeply significant words of this great Elder Statesman of our country” that would he was sure “long be remembered as a notable contribution to better race relations, among all sections of the population”.