Progressive Reform Party 1976, Helen Suzman on second left
Helen Suzman, born Helen Gavronsky (7 November 1917 in Germiston, Gauteng, South Africa), was an anti-apartheid activist and politician. She studied as an economist and statistician at Witwatersrand University. Suzman was the daughter of Lithuanian-Jewish immigrants.
She married Dr. Moses Suzman who was considerably older than her when she was 20, and had two daughters with him before returning to university as a lecturer in 1944. She gave up teaching for politics, being elected to Parliament in 1953 as a member of the United Party. She switched to the liberal Progressive Party in 1959, and represented the Houghton constituency as that party's sole member of parliament, and the sole parliamentarian unequivocally opposed to apartheid, from 1961 to 1974.
She was often harassed by the police and her phone was tapped by them. She had a special technique for dealing with eavesdropping, which was to blow a whistle into the mouthpiece of the phone.
Suzman was noted for her strong public criticism of the governing National Party's policies of apartheid at a time when this was unusual amongst whites, and found herself even more of an outsider by virtue of being an English-speaking Jewish woman in a parliament dominated by Calvinist Afrikaner men. She was once accused by a minister of asking questions in parliament that embarrassed South Africa, to which she replied: "It is not my questions that embarrass South Africa, it is your answers".[1]
Later, as parliamentary white opposition to apartheid grew, the Progressive Party was renamed the Progressive Federal Party, and Suzman was joined in parliament by notable liberal colleagues such as Colin Eglin. She spent a total of 36 years in parliament. Helen Suzman was awarded 27 honorary doctorates from universities around the world, was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and received countelss other awards from religious and human rights organizations around the world. Queen Elizabeth made her a Dame Commander (Civil Division) of the Order of the British Empire in 1989 [1]
She visited Nelson Mandela numerous times in prison, and was at his side when he signed the new constitution in 1996.
She was voted #24 on the Top 100 Great South Africans.
See also
References
- ^ The Helen Suzman Foundation
Suzman, Helen. In No Uncertain Terms: A South African Memoir. New York: Knopf, 1993. ISBN 0679409858
External links
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