Charisse Zeifert: calling discrimination by its proper name

The decision by the Roedean School tennis team to boycott the Jewish tennis team from King David School was unashamedly and unambiguously anti-Jewish. Refusing to play a South African school because it is Jewish is not moral activism, nor does it advance peace or justice. It excludes children on the basis of identity. That is discrimination in its most recognisable form, regardless of the language used to justify it.

In her piece in last week's Sunday Times, "Roedean should have stood firm over King David" ", Kananelo Sexwale attempts to justify this exclusion by reframing it as political conscience rather than antisemitism. Her argument relies on sophistry that collapses under scrutiny.

The facts speak for themselves. On February 3 this year, the King David tennis girls arrived at Roedean for a fixture agreed between the schools. They were informed that Roedean pupils would not take the court.

A distressed senior member of King David School who had accompanied the team recorded a voice note stating plainly that “Roedean has refused to play us because the kids who will be walking onto the courts are Jewish." The recording entered the public domain and was reported in the mainstream media.

Rather than immediately acknowledge what had occurred, Roedean initially framed the matter as a scheduling misunderstanding. Parents aligned with the boycott called into radio programmes expressing discomfort with their daughters playing at a jewish institution. A subsequently leaked conversation between the principals - Phuti Mogale of Roedean and Lorraine Srage of King David - confirmed that pressure from within the Roedean community had led to the cancellation. The pretence that this was about neutral scheduling collapsed.

All South Africans are entitled to equal protection under the constitution... No child should be made to feel their identity is unwelcome or conditional. Roedean ultimately issued an apology to King David, which was accepted, and the match was rescheduled.

The sequence is important because it establishes the nature of the act. This was not a refusal to engage with a foreign state. It was a refusal to compete against Jewish pupils because they attend a Jewish school.

For the Jewish community, the initial harm lay not only in the boycott itself but in the attempt to deny or minimise what had occurred. The early narrative suggested the Jewish school was exaggerating, falsely invoking antisemitism.

All South Africans are entitled to equal protection under the constitution. Jewish pupils are entitled to safety, dignity and full participation in school life. No child should be made to feel their identity is unwelcome or conditional. When Jews are excluded from participation in public life because they are Jewish, that constitutes antisemitism. Calling discrimination by its proper name is not

exaggeration: it is accountability.

Sexwale's central argument is that King David is not merely a Jewish school but institutionally aligned with Israel - and therefore a political actor. On that logic, refusal to play was a moral stance on Gaza and Palestine rather than discrimination against Jews.

But King David is a South African Jewish faith-based school. It educates children in Jewish religion, values, culture and history. For Jews, a connection to Israel as both the historic and present homeland of the Jewish people forms part of religious and communal identity. That connection is civilisational and theological; it is not an endorsement of any particular Israeli government or policy.

The distinction matters.

If Zionism is defined as support for a specific Israeli government or military action, that is a political position open to debate and criticism. But if Zionism is understood - as it is within most Jewish communities - as affirmation of Jewish peoplehood and the historic and present connection of the Jewish people to Israel, then refusing to engage with Jews on that basis is functionally indistinguishable from refusing to engage with them as Jews.

Boycotting Jews for being "Zionist" in that sense is not meaningfully different, in effect, from boycotting Jews for being Jews.

To demand that South African Jews repudiate that aspect of identity to be treated as legitimate participants in civic life introduces a presumption of exclusion unless proven otherwise. That is a standard applied uniquely to Jews. It is discriminatory.

For Roedean, the damage was mitigated by the pushback from within its own community. Parents spoke out. The apology acknowledged error. In that sense, South Africa's constitutional values held. Racism, in any form, cannot be normalised by rhetorical reframing.

The pupils who walked onto that court were South African children.

They were not diplomats or policymakers. They were pupils scheduled to play sport. Refusing to compete against them because they are Jewish, or because their school affirms Jewish identity, is not political conscience.

It is discrimination. And discrimination against Jews has a name: antisemitism.

Zeifert is deputy director of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies