Constructing Jewish immigrant identity: The "kaffireatnik" in South African Yiddish literature

Abstract

Although small gold deposits were found in the northern and eastern Transvaal in 1871, what radically changed the shape of South Africa was the discovery, on the farm Langlaagte in 1886, of surface deposits which persisted at depth. This gold series was initially found to stretch in a straight line for a staggering forty miles along the Witwatersrand, from Modderfontein in the east through Johannesburg in the centre to Randfontein in the west.... From the outset the developing gold industry sought to exploit as workers the subcontinent's technically unskilled blacks. Contract labour almost immediately became the only participation permitted to blacks in the production of this vast wealth.... This paper focuses exclusively on one particular mode of adaptation forced upon only one segment of the South African Jewish population — a singular group of Jewish immigrants who arrived in the half-century between 1880 and 1930 who, in significant numbers, sought work in the concession stores where they could work for and among Yiddish-speaking Jews and, as they thought, earn a living and perhaps prosper without having to face the trauma of engaging in other work which would demand learning a new language and being employed by and working alongside potentially antisemitic South African Gentiles. The dislocating confrontation of these shop assistants with South African racial discrimination in the context of their past personal experience in Eastern Europe was sui generis.