Last week, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre (JHGC) met with the Mthakazi Liberation Front, an organisation which inter alia seeks to promote public awareness of the massacres carried out against the Matabele people in Zimbabwe during the 1980s.

The law-making process in South Africa allows for civil society to comment and give input into proposed new legislation, including an  annual review of the Constitution. 

After Shabbat, thousands of community members will come together throughout the country for ‘Tikkun Layl’ – the traditional Erev Shavuot learning session.

On 20 June, the SAJBD Cape Council will be facilitating a colloquium for its affiliate organisations to debate the question of women singing solo at Yom Hashoah, hopefully the outcome of which will be a working solution for the  Cape Jewish community’s continued all-inclusive commemoration of the Holocaust.

Since the beginning of 2016, a number of events, including a symphony concert and several public lectures, have been held in Cape Town as part of a year-long programme marking the 175th anniversary of Jewish communal life in the city.

For the last few years, the Board has always had at least one – and usually several – cases before the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC). This is not so much due to an upsurge in antisemitic hate speech as to the fact that the process of finalising a complaint, from the date it is lodged through to when a ruling has been made and formally signed off, is inevitably a lengthy one.

The stand-out feature of last week’s Yom Hashoah ceremony in Johannesburg was undoubtedly the large number of school learners in attendance, comprising over half the estimated 2000 people present.

There exist on the statute book various important pieces of legislation aimed, as a whole or in part, at preventing incitement to hatred on the basis of race, ethnicity, creed or other such grounds.

The Board is engaging with the relevant universities to address cases of exams being set on Yom Tov or Shabbat.

When Philip Krawitz, himself a highly regarded businessman, philanthropist and Jewish communal leader, was asked recently to give a talk on the part played by Jews in building the South African economy, he decided to focus on those who in addition to economic success made significant contributions in the philanthropic field.