It is a complicated question. On one hand, Apartheid was largely expression of Afrikaner nationalism. The Afrikaner's were the descedants of 17th century and 18thcentury, and developed an intensely Calvinistic culture. Moreover, Afrikaner nationalism often defined itself as Afrikaner farmers against British capital, and the leap to British capital to British-Jewish capital is not a huge one. Many South African Afrikaner nationalists were sympathetic to Nazi Germany, though more because they felt that was clearest to South African independence than ideological anti-Semitism.

At the same time, Black Africans are not devoid of anti-semitism either. Small Jewish traders were often the white people willing to work in rural areas, and itinierant merchants have often been some of the most susceptible to violence, although I want to be clear this was not ever the primary source of African grievance, and anti-semitism was rarely articulated as a complete ideology. That said, at least in modern South Africa, it's migrants (especially migrant small businessmen from Somalia) from other places in Africa that are the most vulnerable to violence.

However, South Africa has always had a substantial Jewish population. By 1946 South Africa had about a hundred thousand Jews, over 4 percent of the white population. They were considered legally white, and most Jews quickly abandoned the traditional observation of Judaism and quickly "assimilated" into white anglophone culture although Zionism always had a powerful appeal. Jews accepted the privileged status within the racial order of South Africa, and many of the most influential people in South Africa were Jewish.

At the same time, Jews were always active in the anti-racism movements of the time. For example, when Mohandas K Gandhi was in South Africa, his closes white allies were often Jews. The Communist Party, one of the only ones to accepts blacks as equals was initially formed and led by Jews.

When the Nationalist Party, the party that created modern Apartheid and which was riddled with anti-Semites, Malan (the leader) explicitly put the Jewish question aside from South African politics, and the Jewish Establishment chose to accept Apartheid, though often with a certain level of disdain for the explicit racism. But at the same time, the Transvaal Nationalist Party did not accept Jewish members, although this eventually changed.

One of the ironies is that the South African regime discovered they had a deep affinity to Israel. The Afrikaner's analogized the Voortrek, and the sense of being surrounded by a hostile religious / racial other. Moreover, Israel assisted South Africa develop nuclear weapons, and maintained cordial relations until the late 1980s.

There was always a certain incoherence to all racism, and we see many examples of this with Jews in South Africa. Another example was how Taiwanese (mostly investors and diplomates) were honorary whites, where was the descendants of Chinese indentured servants were definetely not white. It's hard to make the complicated nature of race and other disparities fit into the neat lines of a formal system of racial oppression.

JEWS AND ZIONISM: THE SOUTH AFRICAN EXPERIENCE (1910-1967)

Community and Conscience, Gideon Shimoni