Last week, archaeologists unearthed a seal impression bearing the inscription “Belonging to Hezekiah [son of] Ahaz king of Judah” near Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. Hezekiah — Chiskiya HaMelech — is revered in Judaism as having been one of the most righteous of the Jewish monarchs. His father was considerably less righteous. Both, though, were Jewish kings […]
David Saks
David Saks has worked for the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) since April 1997, and is currently its associate director. Over the years, he has written extensively on aspects of South African history, Judaism and the Middle East for local and international newspapers and journals.
David has an MA in history from Rhodes University. Prior to joining the SAJBD, he was curator -- history at MuseumAfrica in Johannesburg. He is editor of the journal Jewish Affairs, appears regularly on local radio discussing Jewish and Middle East subjects and is a contributor to various Jewish publications.
Posted inEquality, Media, Tech
News24 right to axe online comments
Earlier this month News24, the country’s largest online news publisher, took a decision not to allow readers to post comments on all but a few select articles. According to its editor-in-chief Andrew Trench, too many commentators insisted on “pushing the boundaries of free speech”, with the result that comments “tediously drift towards hate speech at […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Verwoerdgate: A different take on Alistair’s faux pas
Alistair Sparks undoubtedly put his foot in it by referring, in the context of praising Helen Zille, to Hendrik Verwoerd as a “smart” politician. Whether he likes it or not, lumping the two together, as well as including him in a list of otherwise progressively inclined white parliamentarians from the apartheid era, to some degree […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
South Africa’s Weimar moment?
What motivates a young black student leader — and we’re not talking here of a self-hating Uncle Tom-like figure but of one well to the left of Malcolm X — to fulsomely declare his admiration for Adolf Hitler? It is surely common knowledge that extreme anti-black racism was an inextricable part of the Nazi ideology. […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Monty Python and the Rhodes statue controversy
Does the name Monty Python still mean something to those under 20? In my day, Monty Python sketches were an inextricable part of everyday discourse. This was despite the fact that, as a result of the cultural boycott of apartheid, the original BBC programmes were not readily available. Fortunately, Jood maak plan, as the saying […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Global freedom in retreat?
Following the collapse of communism, Francis Fukuyama famously asserted that humankind was on the threshold of “the end of history”. By this, he meant that humanity’s sociocultural evolution was poised to resolve itself in a general acceptance of the principles of Western liberal democracy as the basis of government. This he spelled out in his […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Pogroms in Mandelaland
With regard to the latest outbreak of xenophobic violence, I can do no better than quote Ranjeni Munusamy, who wrote (Daily Maverick, January 23): “Incidents of racism and xenophobia have again exposed South Africa as a superficial, ugly, violent nation that lacks respect for other human beings. From exclusive restaurants in Cape Town that discriminate […]
Posted inNews/Politics
On jihadism, Islam and the ‘collective guilt’ notion
“For us, it is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. You know it well … If you harm our children, old women, our fighters, our old men, we will attack the men who fight against us.” This is what Amedy Coulibaly told his hostages following his attack on a kosher […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The latest neo-fascist threat from Cosatu: Should I laugh or start worrying?
Earlier this week, the Western Cape branch of Cosatu put out a statement that, even by the increasingly feral standards of hard-core left-wing politics in South Africa, was quite extraordinary. Issued in the name of Provincial Secretary Tony Ehrenreich, this presented the SA Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) with an ultimatum to cease its “Zionist […]
Posted inNews/Politics
‘Hitler got it right’ goes multiracial
A posting by Rene Smit, an obscure ANC party worker in the Western Cape, quickly went viral when it emerged that it sang the praises of Adolf Hitler for killing off the Jews and intimated that had been retro-actively justified by the behaviour to date of those Jews who survived. The post featured a picture […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The receding spectre of a one-party state
“If you have a country where everyone is complaining, you’ve got a democracy; if you have one where no-one is complaining, you’ve got a problem” (not bad, huh? — © Saks, D — all rights reserved etc … ). Related to the above is the paradox that huge victory margins in elections are indicative not […]
Posted inEnvironment
Is climate change all a ghastly mistake? Someone please tell me
In the early days of TV in South Africa, ie the late 1970s, a programme portentously called “Is the Ice Age coming?” was screened. After watching it, and being of a naturally panicky disposition, I spent a long time afterwards worrying about our imminent freezing to death. Had I been born twenty years later, I […]