Roedean no-show at scheduled tennis match against Jewish Day School exposes deafening silence in mainstream South African society to antisemitism.

By Craig Snoyman

Johannesburg’s elite Roedean School cancelled an inter-school tennis match against King David School Linksfield

Something that seemed superficially normal, but by scratching the surface the puss of festering religious bigotry oozed out. The match wasn’t cancelled because of rain or injury or a genuine scheduling conflict. It was cancelled because a clique of parents demanded their daughters not play against Jews. This was not whispered bigotry; it was explicit and Roedean was too scared to deal with its internal demon. Roedean’s head of senior school, Phuti Mogale, in a telephone call to King David’s principal Lorraine Srage was candid – some parents were applying “significant pressure” not to play “a Jewish school.” This was religious and ethnic discrimination in its purest form — Jewish children excluded from a children’s sporting event solely because of who they are and what they believe.

Under any honest reading of the Constitution this is unlawful. Mogale did not know how to deal with the issue.  Whether she should have been left alone to solve the problem reflects very poorly on the Roedean school board that had not grappled with this intolerance and showed no desire to rebuke the parents urging this boycott. The real culprits, the bigots, would remain completely untouched:

• no identification
• no sanction
• no public shaming
• no mandatory re-education, nothing!

They, as part of Roedean’s fee-paying ecosystem, would remain protected while the school pretended the problem is administrative. Money talks, but bi money talks louder!

Roedean conducted itself shamefully. In two separate, statements, crafted days apart, and published by Flow Communications — a supposedly sophisticated PR firm that should know better — the school peddled outright fabrications: “prior school commitments,” “compulsory academic workshops,” “scheduling clashes,” “miscommunication.”

The second release on 10 February even wrapped itself in virtue-signalling piety: “We will place the best interests of young people first.” It promised an “independent review” and “facilitator” for vague “student concerns,” all while studiously avoiding the non-kosher elephant in the room. These were not clumsy errors. The audio clip of the telephone conversation between the two school heads has gone viral. These statements deliberately gaslighted the Jewish community, buying time, shielding the real perpetrators and deceived the South African public, casting aspersions on King David and indirectly the entire Jewish community. Flow allowed itself to participate in laundering antisemitism using nice polished corporate language. This was not benign PR, this was Bell Pottinger style propaganda. It tapped South Africa’s religious sensitivities, in suggesting that King David, the Jewish school, was lying. It disseminated falsehoods, it resulted in public social media attacks on the Jews and Zionists, and it ignored the humiliation of the young Jewish tennis players, and amplified the school’s denial.

The truth was on the audio clip between the two school heads. The statements were indisputably false. And at this stage Roedean’s house of cards collapsed. A reluctant school board was finally forced to take the first steps in confronting religious intolerance. A grudging written apology admitted that its actions were “deeply hurtful to the Jewish community” but studiously avoided any suggestion that its actions had been antisemitic. Phuti Mogale was under the bus – probably pushed but officially resigning. But in reality, she was the only person who tried to address this discrimination. She didn’t invent the excuses. She was not part of the deception. Somebody had to take the fall and she was the convenient scapegoat. An unwitting high profile non-Jewish African victim of an antisemitic incident, not of her making.

Let us not forget the deafening silence of the guardians of equality enforcement. The Gauteng Department of Education and the national Department of Basic Education — lightning-fast when a racist WhatsApp message from white pupils surfaces — didn’t utter a single word.

-No statement.

-No investigation

-No precautionary suspensions

-No public statements

-No condemnations

-No equality court referrals ISASA, the independent schools’ body that was just as culpable. It too, remained mute.

All the parties one expects to know better were on show, and displaying selective tolerance of antisemitism. The pattern is both unmistakable and shameful.  South African institutions normalised the exclusion of its Jewish citizens at the expense of “Palestine solidarity”. The South African Rugby Union banned Tel Aviv Heat from participating in a tournament in 2023. Cricket South Africa stripped David Teeger of his Under 19 captaincy because of Jewish identity and views. Universities like UCT have blacklisted Israeli academics. The climate of passive discrimination has created environments were Jews conceal their identities and opinions to avoid harassment. Forced declarations of anti-Zionism to join groups are now en vogue. What is framed as “principled politics” is really rank discrimination. But the principled politics of boycotting has been seen to work, and the Roedean parents simply followed the national playbook.

King David Linksfield and Lorraine Srage have shown what actual moral courage looks like: they recorded the call with consent, refused to accept lies, demanded truth, and ultimately accepted an apology so the girls could play tennis without politics poisoning the court. On the other hand, Roedean, its school board, Flow Communications, the bigoted parents, the mute authorities all displayed a spineless cowardice and a disregard for what is right.  This cannot be accepted as ‘politics as normal’. This is discrimination by another name. Religiously intolerant action was nipped at school-level, but the rot will spread.

The Roedean incident is not an outlier, it is not an aberration. It is the logical outcome of a society that has decided some bigotries are more equal than others. Until parents face consequences, until PR firms are held to account for lies, until school boards stop tolerating intolerant organisations that claim to teach about religious tolerance, until educational institutions take strong constitutional stands for what is right rather than acquiesce to the ethnic and religious prejudices of fee-paying parents and until authorities enforce equality without fear or favour, until people and organisations stand up and oppose this,  the guarantee of South African human dignity is worthless. Dignity should not be negotiable – and that applies to Jews as well.

About the writer:

Craig Snoyman is a practising advocate in South Africa.

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