Syndication
Hunting in Zimbabwe For Identity And Family
Memoir
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More in Arts & CultureWhen a Crocodile Eats the Sun
By Peter Godwin
Little, Brown and Company, 352 pages, $24.99.
Last August, I visited an elderly Jewish couple at their spacious apartment in an affluent neighborhood in Johannesburg, South Africa. A distant family friend had referred to them as people who would welcome the opportunity to take me out for dinner during a long journalistic assignment in a country in which I had few acquaintances. Ronnie and Avner were not South African, however, but Zimbabwean, two of the very few Jews left in that troubled country. They lived in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city, where Avner owned a clothing factory, but they frequently traveled to South Africa to escape their country’s awful state of affairs. Avner had fought in the Israeli War of Independence; he and Ronnie visited Israel frequently. I was shocked that an elderly couple with the means to move would continue to live in a country that, since the seizure of white-owned commercial farmland ordered by President Robert Mugabe in 2000, has been steeped in lawlessness, violence and poverty.
A few months later, I heard that Avner had passed away. When I expressed my condolences to Ronnie, she told me that she had finally decided to make aliya. If there is ever a reason for the State of Israel, I thought, Jewish Zimbabweans are it.
In Peter Godwin’s mesmerizing memoir of contemporary Zimbabwe, “When a Crocodile Eats the Sun,” the matter of Israel never comes up. But it was one that nagged me from the minute I read Godwin’s account of the discovery at the heart of this book. When Godwin’s father suffered a heart attack in 1996, Godwin’s mother, Helen, a doctor, told her son to return home. There, hanging on the wall, he saw a photograph of his father’s family that he had never seen before, one that prompted a revelation from his mother: Godwin’s father, George, was not the “Anglo-African in a safari suit and desert boots, with his clipped British accent” that his son had always imagined him to be, but rather a Polish Jew, born Kazimierz Jerzy Goldfarb.
Thus begins Godwin’s process of self-discovery, through which he attempts to learn more about the fate of the European Jews in general and those of his family in particular. He visits museums and libraries, and contacts various European ministries, in an effort to determine what happened to his father’s mother and sister, from whom George was separated as a young man. Godwin learns that his father managed to escape Poland and joined the Free Poles in England, where he met Helen. After the war, the couple immigrated to Southern Rhodesia, a British colony rich with opportunity due to the postwar boom.
Why did George Godwin invent a new life for himself? For starters, “a white in Africa is like a Jew everywhere,” Godwin writes, referring to the loneliness and terror that haunt his parents in a country where going to the supermarket requires carrying stacks of currency — Zimbabwe has the world’s highest rate of inflation — and risking attack by armed thugs. At any moment, their home could be raided by government apparatchiks or by common criminals calling themselves veterans of their country’s war of independence against white rule. The septuagenarian George once got into fisticuffs with a burglar, forcing Helen to install a bolted “rape door” in the hallway as an extra precaution against home invasion.
There were cultural taboos to resist, as well — including characterization as soutpiels, an Afrikaans epithet meaning “salt penis,” used to describe Anglo-Africans who bestride the ocean with one foot in Africa and the other in Europe, allowing their “genitals to dangle in the ocean where they pickle in the brine of cultural confusion.” And if being European was difficult, life as a European Jew must have seemed unbearable. Once a proud community of several thousand, the Jewish population in Zimbabwe has by now diminished to a few hundred, most of them elderly. During one of Peter’s visits, the synagogue in Bulawayo burned down, likely the victim of Mugabe’s campaign of destruction.
But Godwin stumbled upon a more nuanced explanation at, of all places, his father’s funeral. Surveying the multiracial attendants, Godwin notes, “Mugabe had managed to achieve something hitherto so elusive, a common bond forged in the furnace of resistance to an oppressive rule.” Escaping European antisemitism some 60 years ago, George Godwin was simply not going to let hatred chase him and his wife halfway around the world again. Opting out — as so many white Zimbabweans, including the author, had done — was simply not something this hardy old couple could even contemplate. A new life in Africa was “clearly the antidote to Europe’s great burden of history,” and leaving it would be a betrayal of all the Zimbabweans that the Godwins had come to care for and love.
“Like my father before me, I am rejecting my own identity. I am committing cultural treason,” Godwin writes, referring to his decision to leave Zimbabwe and move to America. Yet this admission evinces not simply the guilt of a man who witnessed grave suffering in his country and feels impassive in its enormity, but also of a conflicted Jew who suddenly feels some ineffable — yet ultimately elusive — connection to a people.
James Kirchick is the assistant to the editor-in-chief of The New Republic and reported from Zimbabwe last year.
Comments
Ronnie & the late Avner were up right citizen of once famous Rhodesia/Zimbabwe - Avner was a member of the Central African Zionist council and Ronnie in her time was a well known Madricha in the "HABONIM" movement - Both were and are delightful people charitable beyond the call of duty - We miss the passing of Avner a personal friend - This is our sentiment in brief as it would take many pages to express our feelings towards them - The 2 Galanti
Pushkina asks if "the diaspora is less valuable than living in the land (of Israel)". Yes, obviously. You can read, for example, any sociological research about the quality of Jewish life in the Diaspora. Some of the criteria will always be: Hebrew education, a prolonged experience in Israel, in-marriage. In other words, what is quite self-evident or even trivial in Israel (the Hebrew language, spending time in Israel, marrying a Jew) is an indication of Jewish commitment in a Diaspora community. You might find it interesting to talk with an Israeli who has just returned from his first trip to (let's say) the USA. He might report thus: "I step into a synagogue one Shabbat. Everyone was praying so intensely - yet no one understood what they were saying..." Yes, what seems so silly in the Israeli Jewish context is simply the way things are in the Diaspora.
wow. This is powerful.My family on my mothers side lived there. Jews from Russia; My great grandparentd settled in Africa.My Grandmother passed away 6 years ago and would never leave. It is frustrating and sad to me to hear what has happened in that country and nothing is done.
The author should read Zion in Africa: History of the Jews of Zambia, by Macmillan and Shapira (ISBN No 1-86064-405-8). He will find the contribution made by Ronnie and Avner's families and other Jews to the independence of Zimbabwe and Zambia and perhaps understand why they cared about the countries that gave them a haven before the State of Israel was created. Avner Elkaim's uncle, my father Hanania Elkaim, came to Northern Rhodesia to help his family after they lost all when the Jews fled from Gaza in 1929. Ronnie's father, Joe Furmanovsky, came from Europe to escape anti-Semitism. Our families were never conflicted Jews and we kept our traditions proudly. Both my father and Avner wished to be buried in Africa. We never considered them elderly, and we miss them, as do their many African friends. Their families will continue to do what they can to help Zambia and Zimbabwe into better times.
HAVING BEEN BROUGHT UP IN RHODESIA AND ZIMBABWE,I HAVE SEEN THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIMBABWE JEWERY,THE THUGS THAT MUGABE HAS PLACED THROUGHOUT HIS GOVERNMENT IS A DISEASE THAT MUST BE STOPPPED BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.A 100 YEAR OLD SHUL IN THE SECOND CITY OF BULAWAYO WAS MYSTERIOUSLY BURNT TO THE GROUND A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO,THE ZIM LEADER HAS THE NERVE TO TELL HIS FOLLOWERS THAT THE PROBLEMS OF ZIMBABWE HAS A ZIONIST TONE TO IT, THE AVERAGE JEWISH AGE IN ZIMBABWE IS 78 YEARS OLD,WE MUST TELL THIS STORY TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.WE MUST TELL THE WORLD OF MUGABE'S SEIZING OF FARMS OF EUROPEAN DESCENT , PEOPLE MUST SEE THE ONCE BREAD BASKET OF AFRICA HAS TURNED INTO AFRICA'S NIGHTMARE.THE HIGHEST MORTALITY RATE IN AFRICA HAS BECOME ZIMBABWE,WE NEED YOUR HELP NOW .
For those interested in the history of the Zimbabwe Jewish Community and its contribution to the development of that country I invite you to visit the website www.zjc.org.il in which there are several thousand pages of documents and images telling the story. The website includes some 100 family biographies which weave a tapestry of how Jews (like Peter Godwin's father) sought a place under the sun to build their lives. I am proud to have been born and grew up in that community and in the early 1970s made aliya with a strong conviction that I did not have a long-term place in Africa as a white Jew and that Israel was my true home...physically and spiritually. I had an innate urge to maintain Jewish continuity by moving to Israel and embracing my own cultural identity. The sad demise of the Zimbabwe Jewish community is nevertheless a huge endictment on the country's despotic leadership. (Other books of interest on the subject include Majuta by Barry Kosmin. Mambo Press).
Dear Mr. Kirchick,
I have been trying to contact you about your article
"Carter's Role in Zimbabwe", 11 July article by James Kirchick, NY SUN
A salute from me for yopur exposure of the the Jimmy Carter-Robert Mugabe nexus that has turned into the nightmare for Zimbabwe so many predicted 28 years ago!
I am a former Green Beret officer- Vietnam veteran- and from November 1976-December 1979 had the privilege of commanding African Soldiers in The Rhodesian African Rifles. All soldiers in the Rhodesian forces( most were black) were highly motivated anti-communists more than a decade before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
We were vigorously fighting the Soviet backed tribe of Joshua Nkomo and the Chinese backed tribe of Robert Mugabe.
Almost immediately after Jimmy Carter came to office there were immediate signs of his efforts to topple the Rhodesian government and install Robert Mugabe, a lifelong Marxist, and by far the most sinister of all possible candidates to take over soon to be Zimbabwe.
Most of the white sector of Rhodesia had accepted the concept of majority rule by 1978 but never accepted the notion of dedicated Marxist-Mugabe- as Zimbabwe's leader.
Joseph Columbus Smith Portland, OR 503-528-0151
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file:///Users/columbussmith/Desktop/Columbus'%20writings/New%20Castro%20of%20Africa.webarchive
file:///Users/columbussmith/Desktop/Columbus'%20writings/USA%20Shafting%20Rhodesia.webarchive
file:///Users/columbussmith/Desktop/Columbus'%20writings/Carter%20Reply%20Letter.webarchive
James may be interested to know that I, Ronnie Elkaim, made aliyah just three weeks ago!
interestingly, there are other folks in zimbabwe who consider themselves jewish (and have the DNA study to back them up),a black tribe, the lemba people. also intersting is the fact that the best and brightest of the lemba also find that they must live in south africa to escape the targeting of the mugabe regime. having met many lemba folks and knowing them for almost a decade now, i know that they have are truly jewish; despite their dark skins, as jewishly identified (or more so) than many white jews.
so i am offended when a statement is made such as "two of the very few Jews left in that troubled country." i am also offended when the writer is "shocked" that jews don't consider moving to israel during troubled times. is the diaspora less valuable than the living on the land?
as a jewish community, we must get over the ideas that all jews are white (preferably eastern european yiddish speakers), that israel is the centerpiece of jewish existence, just as we should put aside the notion that the holocaust and israel are the abiding markers of a contemporary jewish identity.