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The Jewish community has a long and proud tradition of contributing to South Africa's development across a wide range of fields, including the arts, business, philanthropy, education, and science. Despite comprising only around 0.1% of the population, South African Jews have produced about a third of the country's Nobel Prize winners. In some areas, however, their contribution has been more modest, most notably as Springbok rugby players and as members of South Africa's governing executive.

In the entire 135-year history of the Springboks, only around ten players connected to the Jewish community have worn the green-and-gold jersey. They are sometimes jokingly referred to as the "Springbok minyan", a reference to the ten men required to form a Jewish prayer quorum. The most famous of them is perhaps Joel Stransky, whose winning drop goal secured the 1995 Rugby World Cup.

Despite their small number, Jewish Springboks have been a welcome feature of the game, and an enduring belief persists among some Afrikaans rugby supporters that a Jewish person in the team is a sign of good luck.

If the number of Jewish Springboks is small, the number who have served in the national executive is even smaller. Since 1910, only four Jews have served as Cabinet ministers and one as a deputy minister. With the recent appointment of Jack Bloom of the Democratic Alliance (DA) as Deputy Minister of Water and Sanitation, that number has now doubled.

Bloom is, by all accounts, a hard-working and dedicated opposition public representative and has long been the bane of the Gauteng Department of Health. He was also one of the first politicians to raise the alarm over those killed in the Life Esidimeni tragedy. What makes his appointment more widely significant, however, is the time period in which Jews in general have been appointed to the government.

First Example

The first example was Dr Henry Gluckman, who served as Minister of Health in Jan Smuts's Cabinet between 1945 and 1948. A leading liberal in the United Party, Gluckman championed a universal, non-racial healthcare system that was decades ahead of its time. It would be another half-century before the appointment of the next Jewish Cabinet minister, Louis Shill, who served briefly as Minister of Housing from 1993 to 1994. A successful businessman who built the Sage financial services group, Shill was brought into government alongside a number of others to assist with South Africa's transition during the final months of apartheid.

The first democratic government under Nelson Mandela included the largest number of Jewish members of the executive. This included those associated with the South African Communist Party, including Joe Slovo as Minister of Housing, Ronnie Kasrils as Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry, and Gill Marcus as Deputy Minister of Finance. Kasrils remained in government under Thabo Mbeki, as Minister for Intelligence Services, where he became infamous for his antagonising anti-Israel positions and support for Hamas.

The timing of these appointments is striking. They all occurred during periods of political change or liberalisation: immediately before the advent of apartheid, during the transition away from apartheid, in the early democratic era, and now during the Government of National Unity (GNU).

This is perhaps unsurprising. As a very small ethnic and religious minority, Jews tend to be particularly vulnerable during periods of intense nationalism and tribal politics, and generally flourish in societies organised around liberal institutions, equal citizenship, and merit.

Not Only Beneficiaries

Jews, however, are not the only beneficiaries of such an environment. They are better understood as an indicator species for the rest of society. Looking at the wider appointments in the latest Cabinet reshuffle, the new ministers and deputy ministers come from a broad range of racial, religious, and ethnic backgrounds. More importantly, this diversity is a by-product of a political shift in the DA's role within the GNU, rather than an exercise in diversity for its own sake.

Predictably, in today's bot-driven social media environment, the appointments were met with the vilest forms of online Islamophobia, racism, antisemitism, and sexism. Yet these reactions were largely disconnected from the broader public conversation, where far greater attention was paid to whether the appointees were qualified and whether they would improve service delivery.

Given that these appointments also occurred during the same week that South Africa experienced another wave of xenophobic rhetoric and violence, it is encouraging that parts of the country's social fabric remain resilient.

Pierneef was one of South Africa's greatest artists, known for his paintings of South African vistas. This column named after him aims to do something similar — sketch the broad vistas of South Africa's domestic landscape.