Language and racial exclusion

Using language to effect racial discrimination

By Adam Yamey

This is a brief extract from the most recent draft of my forthcoming book about the migration of Jews to South Africa. It describes a debate about the 1905 Cape General Dealers Bill in which my great-grandfather, the late Senator Franz Ginsberg (1862-1936) took part.


Franz Ginsberg

The extract
A week later, Franz Ginsberg spoke strongly against the Cape General Dealers' Bill. He did not think it was fair, as it went against the principle of free trade in England. If a man was allowed to come to this country they must, he said, give him the same rights as anyone else. He argued that the people whom it was desirable to exclude from being allowed to trade could be better looked after by exercising the sanitary laws. He felt, quite correctly, that dealers should be allowed to trade unless they disobeyed rules that were applicable to dealers from all ethnic groups. The bill in question was, I believe, in connection with newcomers to the colony who wished to open trading stores or shops. These included in the main Indians, but also Jews.

The newspaper Indian Opinion, which was founded by the future 'Mahatma' Ghandi, and published in various Indian languages and English at his settlement at Phoenix in Natal, like Franz, recognised the sinister or unfair nature of The General Dealers' Bill. It wrote:
"According to the Bill, all the present licence holders are protected unless they have committed breaches against the law regarding Sunday trading … or sanitation, …"
This little extract explains Franz's comment about sanitary laws.
The article continues:
"Both the Magistrate and the Licensing Court have the power to refuse the licence on grounds, inter alia, of the character of the applicant, of his inability to write in some European language …"
This aspect of the Bill really did upset the writer of the article, who continued:
"The most objectionable clause throughout this Bill is with reference to the European languages. The habitual affront to millions of British Indians and their cultured languages that such a provision implies, renders it necessary for the British Indians at the Cape to oppose the Bill, which otherwise they could have gladly assented to."

Meanwhile, this Bill was also a subject of discussion in the Parliament in London. Hansard, the written report of proceedings in the UK Houses of Parliament, recorded on the 5th of May 1905 that Mr Runciman asked:
"…the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the Government of Cape Colony has introduced into the Cape Parliament a Bill limiting the right to trade in the colony to persons who can write in a European language, including Yiddish, and whether the effect of this measure, if passed, will be to exclude from the opportunity of trading many of His Majesty's Indian subjects; and, if so, what steps His Majesty's Government propose to take to protect the rights of His Majesty's Indian subjects."
It would seem that Franz was against measures designed to make it difficult for Indians to trade in the colony. Also, it is worth noting that Runciman's words suggest that by 1905, Yiddish, which was spoken by the Eastern European Jews entering South Africa, was regarded as being a European language. Not so long before in British South Africa, Yiddish had been regarded as being an Asian rather than a European language because it was written in the Hebrew alphabet. The Cape Town lawyer Morris Alexander, whom we shall meet again in another chapter, was instrumental in getting Yiddish recognised as a European language, and this was of great importance to Eastern European Jews wishing to settle in the Cape Colony.