Jews in South Africa

Apparently things are not well for South Africa's Jews:

World Jewish Relief has been helping impoverished Jewish communities around the world for more than 70 years.

Jews in places as diverse as Argentina, Austria, Belarus, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Iran, Iraq, Lithuania, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine have all received aid from the charity, which was set up in 1933.

But South Africa was one place that WJR had not previously been involved with.

There have been complaints that Jews - like many other whites in South Africa - are being discriminated against in the job market as part of a nationwide government strategy to reverse the trends set by the racist apartheid era.

Louise delivered aid to fellow Jews who were living in economic and social hardship.

World Jewish Relief says: "The government has set a target for all businesses to accurately reflect the national demography in terms of the racial background of staff in their workplace by 2006.

"This means that in a year's time, 80 per staff of staff must be black and 20 per cent white, with huge fines and other penalties for companies who fail to meet the criteria.

"The current trend among skilled labour is in exactly the opposite proportion, which means that Jews are being laid off on a massive scale and those currently out of work are virtually unemployable."

Just another indicator that South Africa is probably not going to survive as a multiracial democracy where people are judged solely by their abilities.