Helen Suzman - Biography

Helen Suzman, DBE (November 7, 1917 – January 1, 2009) was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician.

Biography

Helen Suzman, a life-long citizen of South Africa, was born as Helen Gavronsky in 1917 to Jewish immigrants.

She studied as an economist and statistician at Witwatersrand University. At age 19, she married Dr Moses Suzman (died 1994), who was considerably older; they had two daughters. She returned to university as a lecturer in 1944. She gave up teaching for politics, being elected to the House of Assembly 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 atypical of white South Africans, and found herself even more of an outsider because she was 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".

Later, as parliamentary white opposition to apartheid grew, the Progressive Party merged with Harry Schwarz's Reform Party and became the Progressive Reform Party. It 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.

She visited Nelson Mandela on numerous occasions while he was in prison, and was present when he signed the new constitution in 1996.

Suzman was awarded 27 honorary doctorates from universities around the world, was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and received countless other awards from religious and human rights organizations around the world. Queen Elizabeth II made her an honorary Dame Commander (Civil Division) of the Order of the British Empire in 1989. She was voted #24 in the Top 100 Great South Africans TV series.

Suzman died on New Years Day 2009, aged 91. Achmat Dangor, Nelson Mandela Foundation chief executive, said Suzman was a "great patriot and a fearless fighter against apartheid".

See also

• List of South Africans
• List of Jews from Sub-Saharan Africa
• Progressive Party (South Africa)
• Janet Suzman, her niece and South African actress and director.

Bibliography

• Suzman, Helen. In No Uncertain Terms: A South African Memoir. New York: Knopf, 1993. ISBN 0679409858

External links

• Helen Suzman (BBC radio programme)
• Helen Suzman honoured in Côte Saint-Luc, Quebec Canada
• The Post, 1 January 2009
• Mark Tran, Anti-apartheid campaigner Helen Suzman dies at 91, The Guardian, Thursday 1 January 2009
• Stanley Uys, Helen Suzman: Campaigner who single-handedly carried the anti-racism banner in South Africa's apartheid parliament, The Guardian, Thursday, 1 January 2009
• Anti-Apartheid Activist Helen Suzman Dies at 91 By Scott Bobb Voice of America
• Helen Suzman, Anti-Apartheid Leader, Dies at 91, The New York Times, Jan. 1, 2009
• Helen Suzman: The woman who changed a nation M&G