Jews in South Africa 01: Immigration movements
The first places of White settlement since 1652 - religious tolerance since 1803 - immigration before and after 1880 - immigration test since 1902 - quota system since 1930 - German Jews since 1933
from: South Africa; In: Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971, Vol. 15
presented by Michael Palomino (2008)
<SOUTH AFRICA, republic comprising four provinces - Cape of Good Hope, *Natal, *Orange Free State, and the *Transvaal - and administering the mandated territory of *South-West Africa.
[State history]
The Cape, the first European settlement in southern Africa, was founded in 1652 by the Dutch and became a British colony in 1806; Natal was a British colony from 1843; the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, founded by Dutch (Boer) emigrants from the Cape, were republics until annexed by Britain in 1902 after the Boer War. In 1910 the colonies were merged as the Union of South Africa under the British flag. In 1961 the Union became a republic outside the British Commonwealth.
Settlement.
BEGINNINGS (1652-1869).
[Jewish names in the records of the settlements - Dutch East India Company wants Protestant settlers]
Jewish associations with South Africa date back a long way. Jewish scientists and cartographers in Portugal contributed to the success of Vasco da Gama's voyage which led to the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope in 1497. Jewish merchants in Holland were associated with the Dutch East India Company, which established the white settlement at the Cape in 1652, and Jewish names appear in the early records of the settlement. These were probably converts to Christianity who had come to Holland from Central and Eastern Europe.
The (col. 184)
company required all its servants and settlers to be professing Protestants.
[since 1803: Jewish settlement under religious tolerance]
Identifiably Jewish settlement began only after the introduction of complete religious tolerance under the Batavian Republic in 1803 and its confirmation by the British who took over the Cape three years later. Enterprising Jewish individuals then began to arrive, mainly from Germany and the British Isles. Some made their way from *Cape Town (where the first congregation was founded in 1841) deep into the interior and played pioneering roles in the development of what was then a backward country with a thinly scattered white population. Prominent individuals were Nathaniel *Isaacs, Benjamin *Norden, Jonas *Bergtheil, the *Mosenthal brothers, the *Solomon family, and Joel *Rabinowitz.
[[Black and native peoples and slavery are not mentioned]].
[1860s: Jewish centers Cape Town in the eastern region]
By the end of the 1860s, when the Jews in the Cape numbered a few hundred families in a white population of something over two hundred thousand, there were two main centers of Jewish settlement in the colony, the older in Cape Town and environs, and the other in the eastern region, mainly in Grahamstown, *Port Elizabeth and district, and Graaf Reinet. Individuals - itinerant traders and storekeepers, with a few professional men - had also penetrated into the more remote inland areas. Though small in numbers, they made a significant contribution to the economic advancement of the country and to its social and civic life.
[[Black and native peoples and slavery are not mentioned]].
GROWTH (FROM 1869).
The opening up of the diamond fields in Griqualand West (*Kimberley) in 1869 and of the gold mines of the *Witwatersrand in 1886, marked a turning point in the economic and political history of South Africa. From being predominantly pastoral, it developed rapidly into a modern industrial society.
[["Modern industrial society" means: the blacks are the slaves]].
[Jewish immigration before and during the 1880s - centers Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Witwatersrand]
The new economic opportunities attracted Jews among the immigrants from Britain, Germany, and elsewhere on the continent of (col. 185)
Europe, as well as from America and Australia, and other countries. They were the forerunners of the mainstream of Jewish immigrants who began to arrive from Eastern Europe in the 1880s, a tributary of the vast outflow escaping czarist oppression and economic deprivation and seeking freedom and new opportunity, of whom the majority found their way to North America.
[["Freedom" means: The blacks are the slaves, and this is never mentioned in the Encyclopaedia Judaica]].
Many of these immigrants settled in Cape Town and nearby towns, but later spread to more distant rural areas, and also found their way to the goldfields in the Witwatersrand. Few villages in the Cape, the Orange Free State, and later in the Transvaal, were without their Jewish peddlers or storekeepers, who were usually joined in time by their families and kinsmen from overseas. They formed small communities, and in some cases (as in the ostrich feather center *Oudtshoorn) larger Jewish settlements.
The mainstream of Jewish migration, however, flowed to *Johannesburg and other towns on the Witwatersrand, which soon after the Boer War (1899-1902) - during which there was an exodus of war "refugees" - became the nucleus of the largest concentration of Jews in South Africa. There was also a smaller movement into Natal, particularly to *Durban.
The steady extension of Jewish settlement to the new areas was reflected in the dates when the first congregations were established: Kimberley 1875, Oudtshoorn 1883, Durban 1883, Johannesburg 1887, *Pretoria 1890, *Bloemfontein 1876, Germiston 1896.
[1960: population figures]
According to the official census of 1960 the Jewish population numbered 114,762 (3.62% of the white population and 0.71% of a total population (all races) of 16,002,797). Of them 73,051 were living in Transvaal Province, 32,104 in Cape Province, 6,189 in Natal, and 3,157 in the Orange Free State. Their distribution among the larger urban centers was 57,806 in Johannesburg, and 64,799 in the whole Witwatersrand complex; 22,716 in Cape Town; 5,353 in Durban; 3,553 in Pretoria; 2,972 in Port Elizabeth; 1,219 in Bloemfontein.
The general movement has been particularly marked in the Jewish community. In 1960, 112,985 Jews were living in "urban" districts compared with only 1,516 in "rural" areas (as defined in the official statistics).
Immigration.
Official statistics on immigration became available only after the South African War, but it can be conjectured that the Jewish population in 1880 was about 4,000. Ten years later it had grown to about 10,000. Around 1900 it was in the vicinity of 25,000, and in the 1904 official census it had reached a total of some 38,000. These figures reflect clearly how the Jewish population was growing through the addition of newcomers from abroad. Between 1880 and 1910, some 40,000 Jewish immigrants entered the country. Thereafter, for various reasons, the numbers decreased, with the exception of the years 1924 to 1930. In all, in the half-century from 1910 to 1960, it is estimated that there were perhaps 30,000 Jewish immigrants.
Table. Jews in South Africa
Year
number of Jews
xxxxxxxxxxxxx1880xxxxxxxxxxxxx
approx. 4,000xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
1890
approx. 10,000xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1900 approx.
approx. 25,000xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1904
38,000xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Table by Michael Palomino; from: South Africa; In: Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol. 15, col. 186
[The countries of origin - the motives]
Until about 1890, the majority of Jewish immigrants came from Britain, and in lesser numbers from Germany. Thereafter, the influx of "Russian" Jews (as the East European Jews were officially designated) increased and within a couple of decades the "greeners" outnumbered the older elements. They came predominantly (approximately 70%) from Lithuania and the other territories on the eastern shores of the Baltic (South African Jewry came to be described as "a colony of Lithuania") and also from Latvia, Poland, Belorussia, and further afield.
In their escape from oppression and poverty in Eastern Europe the Jews who went to South Africa were encouraged by success stories of individuals, reports of the sympathetic attitude of the Boers to Jews as the "Chosen People", the helping hand stretched out by older settlers, and inflated stories of the fortunes (col. 186)
made from the gold mines. Most of the East Europeans at first encountered great hardships and disabilities economically before achieving prosperity. South Africa's attitude to Jewish immigration was influenced by various factors, among them conservative official policies in regard to immigration generally, partly due to the internal struggle between the rival English-speaking and Afrikaner sections of the population.
The changing political and economic situation in the country, and at times, the relatively high proportion of Jews among immigrants from alien (non-British) countries, also played their part. Although, in an overall historical perspective, and by comparison with other countries, South Africa's attitude was not an unfavorable one, Jewish leaders frequently felt the need for vigilance against discrimination, and at certain periods Jewish immigration became a subject of intensive political agitation (see below, legal and social status).
[since 1902: immigration test for reading and writing - since 1906: Yiddish is recognized - 1930: Quota Act]
In 1902, Jewish immigrants faced a crisis because a new literacy test at the Cape (designed to exclude Asiatics) called for the ability to read and write "in the characters of a European language". There were moves to deny this status to Yiddish because it was written in Hebrew characters, but the language was officially accorded recognition in the Cape immigration law of 1906. This provision was also incorporated after Union in the basic Immigration Act of 1913.
In the early 1920s Jewish communal leaders were engaged in a lengthy dispute with the government on the interpretation of the immigration laws, which had resulted in severe restrictions on economic grounds. These restrictions were removed in 1924, but the increased Jewish immigration which followed led in 1930 to the enactment of a law generally referred to as the "Quota Act". This did not restrict Jewish immigration per se but by imposing numerical limitation upon all immigration from specified countries of Eastern and southern Europe, it substantially reduced the admission of Jewish immigrants.
[1933-1940: approx. 5,500 German Jewish refugees - since 1940 only little immigration]
Soon afterward the influx of Jewish refugees, from Nazi Germany - and especially the dramatic arrival in 1936 of a chartered boat, the Stuttgart, with 537 German Jewish refugees on board - resulted in a major agitation and precipitated the enactment of the "Aliens Act" of 1937. This law gave plenary powers to an Immigrants Selection Board, which was required, among other considerations, to apply the criterion of "assimilability". The number of Jewish refugees from Germany then dropped considerably, the total between 1933 and 1940 being approximately 5,500.
During World War II, Jewish immigration virtually ceased and in the immediate postwar period was largely limited to aged parents and children of persons already living in South Africa and to other specified categories. Following the virtual destruction, in the Holocaust, of the (col. 187)
communities from which South Africa had drawn its Jewish immigrants, as well as the movement toward the State of Israel, the overall figure of Jewish immigration to South Africa dropped to a few hundred annually. The fluctuations of Jewish immigration are reflected in the following representative figures:
Table 1. Jewish immigrants 1903-1950 [[some examples]]
Year
Jewish immigrants
xxxxxxxxxxxx1903xxxxxxxxxxxx
4,265xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1904
2,465xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1908
909xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1915
193xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1927
1,752xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1929
2,788xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1930
1,881xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1933
745xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1936
3,330xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1937
954xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1940
218xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1945
49xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1947
688xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1950
176xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
DEMOGRAPHIC ASPECTS.
[Comparison of the Jewish with the white non-Jewish population]
The growth of the South African Jewish population through both immigration and natural increase is shown in the following table, based on official census returns:
Table 2. Jewish population compared with the white population [[some examples]]
Year
Total [[White and Jewish Population]]
% of White Population
1904
38,101xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
3.41%
1911
46,919xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 3.68%
1918
58,741xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 4.12%
1921
62,103xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 4.09%
1926
71,816xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 4.28%
1936
90,645xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 4.52%
1946
104,156xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 4.39%
1951
108,497xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 4.11%
1960
114,762xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 3.62%
[[The black and native population is not mentioned]].
Until 1936, when the proportion of Jews in the population reached its peak of 4.52%, the annual Jewish increase was proportionately higher than that of the white population generally. In the succeeding 25 years (1936-1960), however, it was only 1.77% compared with 2.26% for the white population as a whole, and in the decade 1950 to 1960, it was only one-half of the general figure.
The relative decline of the Jewish percentage was due to the restrictive immigration laws; the lower birthrate of Jews compared with that of the general white population; a certain amount of emigration; and the higher number of Jews in the older age groups.
In the early years, the high masculinity in sex distribution was similar to that of all typical immigrant communities, but later it dropped sharply. In 1904, there were 25,864 males and 12,237 females, while by 1960, males numbered 57,198 and females 57,563. The proportion of foreign-born to local-born Jews has also radically changed. Whereas in 1936, 46.69% were South African-born (for females the figure was 50%), the large majority are now South African-born.> (col. 188)
