"We want Hitler": Johannesburg Councilor's Nazi outburst ignites a firestorm

In a city council chamber still shadowed by South Africa’s apartheid past, a new kind of venom erupted last Thursday. Tebogo Nkonkou, a Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) councilor and Johannesburg’s Community Development overseer, didn’t just interrupt a Jewish colleague—he invoked Adolf Hitler, threatening to don a shirt with the Nazi dictator’s face if Democratic Alliance (DA) councilor Daniel Schay persisted in using a laptop emblazoned with an Israeli-South African flag. “We want Hitler,” Nkonkou bellowed, turning a routine meeting into a grotesque spectacle that has since reverberated far beyond the city’s borders.

The trigger? Schay’s unapologetic display of Israel-themed paraphernalia—a tie and a computer case—that Nkonkou branded a symbol of “killing innocent women and children.” To him, the Israeli flag wasn’t just a national emblem; it was a provocation and a mirror to South Africa’s own history of oppression. “I will also come in a shirt with the face of Hitler,” he told Speaker Nobuhle Mthembu, who chided him for setting a “bad example.” Undeterred, Nkonkou doubled down, heckling Schay with chants of “We want Hitler” as the chamber descended into chaos.

The outburst wasn’t solo. An Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) councilor piled on, decrying the “flag of an apartheid country” in a nation that knows apartheid’s scars too well. “Kids are being killed in Gaza even today, and you are watching,” they charged, while others jeered Schay with cries of “racist flag” and “From the river to the sea, free free Palestine.” It was a scene less about governance than raw, unfiltered rage—a collision of local politics and global fault lines, with Israel as the lightning rod.

South Africa’s Jewish community, led by the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD), didn’t hold back. Calling Nkonkou’s rhetoric “abhorrent,” they labeled his Hitler invocation “a blatant act of antisemitic intimidation” aimed at Schay, the chamber’s lone visibly Jewish voice. “For an elected public representative to invoke Hitler—a figure synonymous with genocide and the systematic extermination of six million Jews—as a means of threatening a Jewish councilor is despicable,” the SAJBD stated on Facebook. They questioned whether Nkonkou, a public servant in a democracy forged from inclusivity, is fit to hold office.

But the council meeting wasn’t just a stage for antisemitic theater—it was a battleground over memory and morality. DA councilor Lynda Shackleford had tabled a motion to reverse a 2018 decision renaming a road after Leila Khaled, the Palestinian militant lionized for hijacking planes in the 1970s. Backed by 5,000 residents’ objections, Shackleford and DA colleague Martin Williams argued that honoring a figure tied to “violent acts that violated the rights of innocent citizens” mocks South Africa’s aspirations for peace. Nkonkou saw it differently: Khaled, he proclaimed, is “a revolutionary, a freedom fighter, and a symbol of resistance against imperialism,” her plane hijackings a bold cry against oppression. Another councilor drew a parallel to Nelson Mandela, noting both were branded terrorists by their foes.

The motion failed. The African National Congress (ANC)-led council, the DA charged, ignored constituents to burnish its anti-Israel credentials, squandering funds on symbolism over services. Williams vowed to fight on; the SAJBD pledged to seek a unifying alternative. But Nkonkou’s Hitler threat overshadowed it all, a stark reminder of how quickly discourse can veer into the abyss.

The ANC’s long-standing critique of Israel as an “apartheid state”—a stance echoed by the EFF and PAC—frames such outbursts as righteous anger against a perceived oppressor. Yet invoking Hitler, the architect of the Holocaust, crosses a line even allies might blanch at. Schay, posting on X, tied the ANC’s behavior to why U.S. President Donald Trump “hates the party,” hinting at broader diplomatic fallout.

The incident poses uncomfortable questions. Is Nkonkou’s tirade a fringe rant, or a symptom of a deeper rot in South Africa’s political culture? Can a country that prides itself on overcoming hate tolerate a councilor channeling its worst echoes? The SAJBD sees a legal breach—antisemitism isn’t just offensive, it’s actionable. Yet the council’s rejection of Shackleford’s motion suggests a majority unswayed by such concerns, prioritizing ideological purity over reconciliation.

For now, Johannesburg’s chamber stands as a microcosm of a world grappling with Israel’s place in it—where flags ignite fury, history is weaponized, and Hitler’s ghost can still be summoned to settle scores.

Jpost contributed to this article.