Open Letter to Wits SRC President Mcebo Dlamini from Jewish student: iLIVE

I have become aware of your recent Antisemitic hate speech and slander strewn across Social Media.

Dear Mcebo;

I have become aware of your recent Antisemitic hate speech and slander strewn across Social Media. Following the Xenophobic violence that has been plaguing South Africa over the past weeks, it is a great shame that you chose this time, on this Freedom Day,  to further spread hate, violence and discrimination on the basis of religion and/or ethnicity.

The only offence I have committed against you is simply being Jewish. I have never met you, and most likely we have much in common yet you HATE me with so much unbridled passion - if only you could express that passion in standing up for those that have suffered from xenophobic violence. The suffering these innocent hard-working civilian have endured is due to the very same attitude that you have shown manifesting  in South African society.

You claim, as many do, to support the cause of the Palestinian people. Must this, however, come with the hate that you so clearly show for the Jewish people?

Does one need to hate Jewish people and “love Adolf HITLER” as you unashamedly claim to do in order to support the Palestinian cause? Please educate me on how a hate for Jews enhances your stance?

When you claim to love Adolf Hitler, do you also love the fact that he murdered 11 000 000 human beings with 6 000 000 Jewish people murdered for simply that - being Jewish. What about the homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Romas and disabled people, who were likewise systematically massacred? Where is your love for them?

Do you choose to love Hitler’s attitude of Racial Superiority? Where is your love for the “Rhineland Bastards”, as they were contemptuously called, who were of Mixed African and German Descent and were consigned to compulsory sterilisation due to the fact that they had black lineage? As a young leading South African with such a rich history - is this what you love?

I ask you with a heavy heart - is this what Luthuli, Mandela, Sisulu, Tambo, Hani have fought for? For you, as a member of a movement with so great a human rights tradition - the ANCYL - to “love Adolf Hitler”?

What about our Jewish brothers and sisters who fought side-by-side together with their oppressed fellow South Africans to bring down the evil Nationalist regime – people like Joe Slovo, Ruth First, Denis Goldberg, Lionel Bernstein, Arthur Goldreich, Harold Wolpe, Helen Suzman and so many others? 

All of these Jewish Stalwarts of the struggle for democracy in South Africa would have been targeted for death by the Nazi regime, simply because they were Jewish. How would they feel about knowing that the South Africa that they fought so hard for is one in which the movement that they were so closely involved has a leader that has an affectionate love for Adolf Hitler?

As Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela so eloquently put it, “I always knew that deep down in every human heart, there is mercy and generosity. No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than the opposite”.

Mandela’s vision for this nation is the one that I love, is the one that I would fight for, for empathy, equality and mutual respect. That is the country I know.  I do not know, nor do I want to know, the South Africa you and others like you would plunge us all into through spreading such hatred against your fellow citizens.

I do not know this place of religious hatred – it is the South Africa of the past, the South Africa that so many people struggled against so that we, as young adults, could instead promote peace, love and understanding.    

I know you were not born to “Love Adolf Hitler”.  Adolf Hitler hated many people including the Jewish people simply because “of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion”. By loving Adolf Hitler you align yourself with his value of hatred for another simply because of his religion.

All I ask is for you to  love us - as Jews - for being South Africans and the many commonalities we share, rather than hating us for the few differences we possess.

All I simply ask is for you to love, it’s more natural.

Kind Regards

Jewish Student

• SAUJS condemns the recent Social Media Posts by Mcebo Dlamini containing vitriolic antisemitic rhetoric and expressing a “love for Adolf Hitler”. We call on Wits to take the harshest disciplinary action against Mr Dlamini, whose actions are diametrically opposed to the democratic, non-racial values that the University has always stood for. Furthermore we call on Mr Dlamini to do the honourable thing and step down from his position as he is clearly not fit to represent the Wits student body. This Anti-Semitic and Racial behaviour cannot be tolerated at an Academic Institution. SAUJS will be taking action against Mr Dlamini for his recent comments and hope that Justice will prevail swiftly, as it always has, at Wits University and in this country.