Helen Suzman, OMSG, DBE (née Gavronsky; 7 November 1917 – 1 January 2009) was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician. She represented a series of liberal and centre-left opposition parties during her 36-year tenure in the whites-only, National Party-controlled House of Assembly of South Africa at the height of apartheid.

She hosted the meeting that founded the Progressive Party in 1959, and was its only MP in the 160-member House for thirteen years. She was the only member of the South African Parliament to consistently and unequivocally oppose all apartheid legislation.

Suzman was instrumental in improving prison conditions for members of the banned African National Congress including Nelson Mandela, despite her reservations about Mandela's revolutionary policies, and was also known for using her parliamentary privilege to evade government censorship and pass information to the media about the worst abuses of apartheid. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Early life and education

Suzman was born Helen Gavronsky in 1917 to Frieda and Samuel Gavronsky, Jewish Lithuanian immigrants. She was born in Germiston, then a small mining town outside Johannesburg. Her mother died shortly after she was born.

Suzman matriculated in 1933 from Parktown Convent, Johannesburg. She studied for a bachelor's degree in commerce at Witwatersrand University. At age 19, she married Dr. Moses Suzman (who died in 1994), who was 33, and an eminent physician; the couple had two daughters, one of whom became a physician. Helen Suzman returned to university in 1941 to complete a degree in economics and economic history. After completing her degree she spent the rest of the war working for the Governor-General's War Fund and as a statistician at the War Supply board. In 1945, she became a tutor and later lecturer in economic history at Witwatersrand University.

She was elected to the House of Assembly in 1953 as a member of the United Party for the Houghton constituency in Johannesburg.

The United Party caucus supported the second reading of the 1953 Separate Amenities Bill that provided for separate (and effectively unequal) facilities for Blacks, Coloureds, Indians and Whites. When the vote was taken, Helen Suzman and one other UP member refused to vote and walked out of the House.

The solo years: 1961–1974

After the 1961 election, Prime Minister Hendrik F. Verwoerd announced in Parliament that he had never believed the Progressive Party would be a threat and, turning towards Suzman, said "I have written you off". Suzman replied "And the whole world has written you off".

As the sole representative of her party in Parliament, she sought to do the work of an entire opposition party by herself. In her first session she made 66 speeches, moved 26 amendments and put 137 questions. Most of her questions concerned treatment of Black, Coloured and Indian people – on issues such as housing, education, forced removals, Pass Law offences, detentions, bannings, whippings, police brutality and execution.

For two more general elections (1966 and 1970), she was again the sole member returned for her party to Parliament. As a result, for 13 years, she dined alone in Parliament with no other MP to discuss tactics or approach. Often, as apartheid legislation was introduced, she would call a division of the house, a process whereby the members of the Parliament had physically to stand up and be counted. On many such occasions, as when opposing the infamous 90-day detention law, she found herself alone at one side of the Parliamentary chamber and all other MPs at the other side. 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."

On one occasion, Prime Minister Verwoerd announced in Parliament to her: 'You are of no account. Your days in Parliament are numbered.' Suzman replied: 'Why? Are you going to put me under house arrest or put me on Robben Island?' One Nationalist MP, Piet Koornhof, said to her in Parliament: "If I should come home one evening and my wife should rant and rave the way the hon. member for Houghton did this afternoon, there would be only one of two things that one could do to her... I think she deserves a good hiding". In May 1965 P. W. Botha (then Minister of Coloured Affairs) remarked: ‘The Honourable Member for Houghton... is in the habit of chattering continually. If my wife chattered like that Honourable Member, I would know what to do with her. There is nothing that works on my nerves more than a woman who continually interrupts me. She is like water dripping on a tin roof.’ In 1986, she had the following exchange with the then State President Botha: "Helen Suzman: Stupid! P. W. Botha: Woman!"

In February 1974, LJC Botha, Nationalist MP for Rustenburg remarked: ‘When she gets up in this House, she reminds me of a cricket in a thorn tree when it is very dry in the bushveld. His chirping makes you deaf but the tune remains the same year in and year out. In her fight for the Bantu, the honourable member... sings the same tune for year after year.’

Parliamentary career: 1974–1989

Later, as parliamentary white opposition to apartheid grew, the Progressive Party gained a further 6 seats (in 1974) and Suzman was joined in parliament by notable liberal colleagues such as Colin Eglin. The party then merged in 1975 with Harry Schwarz's Reform Party and became the Progressive Reform Party. It was renamed the Progressive Federal Party when further MPs from the reformist wing of the United Party joined in 1977 and the party became the official opposition.

After the 1976 Soweto shootings, MP Dr HMJ van Rensburg said: "It is a pity you were not one of them, Helen" and another called her "a saboteur of the police". Suzman herself said: "Every Nationalist MP should go to at least one funeral for unrest victims heavily disguised as human beings, instead of sitting on their green benches in parliament, insulated like fish in an aquarium."

In 1986, there was the following exchange in Parliament when Minister of Law and Order Le Grange asked "Who is the hon Member for Houghton's No 1 man in South Africa? It is Nelson Mandela" Mrs Suzman responded: "Let him go!" Le Grange continued: "She admires him with everything she has. He is the only man who according to her can counteract the present unrest situation in South Africa and negotiate on peace". Mrs Suzman interjected: "That's right!" Neville Alexander, too, attributed the transfer of Van Rensberg to another prison, to Suzman's visit. Alexander noted that: "Had Mrs Suzman not come in February 1967 there is no saying what might have happened" According to Neville Alexander, it was "important to note that, unofficially, the first Suzman visit is considered to be the turning point in the treatment of the political prisoners at Robben Island. This was certainly no mere coincidence..." Andrew Mlangeni, a senior ANC member who was on Robben Island with Mandela, described how "[w]henever our treatment in prison tended to improve a little bit, we knew that Suzman was on her way. We would get things such as books that you perhaps ordered more than six months ago. Suzman also brought relevant books for the prisoners; Nelson Mandela later stated that he had read Natan Sharansky's Fear No Evil from cover to cover after being given it by Helen Suzman. They would give you your books if you were studying, because those were some of the things we raised on Robben Island. You would have to wait for months before you could get books prescribed by the University of South Africa and other institutions, but as soon as you got them, you knew that Suzman was on her way to see the conditions under which we were living, to see how best she could help us.

Only a person such as Suzman could help us. The International Red Cross also used to visit us on Robben Island, but they couldn’t do as much as Suzman. Suzman was not afraid to go to Pretoria to the commissioner and raise these issues personally, to say that these were the conditions under which people were living, please bring about some improvement. She was a fearless lady."

She visited Robert Sobukwe when he was in virtual solitary confinement for 6 years and repeatedly sought his release in Parliament.

She visited banned persons, such as Albert Luthuli, Winnie Mandela and Mamphela Ramphele, and made effective representations on their behalf.

She visited Bram Fischer and other ANC and Communist Party political prisoners and personally provided them with speakers and records, seeking improvements to their conditions with ministers and in Parliament. She visited Fischer several times in hospital, calling repeatedly for his release and remarking in the press that with so many millions spent on security she did not understand why the government was so afraid of one incapacitated, bedridden old man. She was influential in his eventual release.

She attended the militant – and often dangerous – funerals of activists whenever invited to do so in the belief that her presence could prevent police brutality. She used these visits to arm herself with evidence from on the spot investigations "to challenge forcefully the government and bear personal witness

to the suffering inflicted on millions of South Africans".

Other issues

Although principally concerned with issues of race discrimination, Suzman was also concerned with other issues including women's rights. Her maiden speech was on the 1953 Matrimonial Affairs Bill. Women's rights (and in particular those of Black women) became part of the larger fight for human rights. She campaigned against gender discrimination, particularly as it affected African women whose status in customary law was that of "perpetual minors." In 1988 she was instrumental in having matrimonial legislation enacted that greatly improved the legal status of women. She fought for equal matrimonial property rights for Black women, divorce by consent and the reform of abortion laws.

In 1971, she was the only member of Parliament who voted against what she described as "the harshest drugs law in the world" that laid down a mandatory 2-year sentence of imprisonment for possession of cannabis and a mandatory 5-year sentence of imprisonment for possession of more than 115g of cannabis. She supported the decriminalisation of marijuana use, stating publicly that possession of marijuana/cannabis (or dagga, as it is known in South Africa) for personal use should not be a criminal offence.

Post-parliamentary career: 1989–2009

She was appointed by Mandela to the first electoral commission of South Africa that oversaw the first election based on universal franchise in 1994.

She was chairwoman of the Vaal Reef Disaster Fund for three years, appointed to look after the widows and children of the 104 men killed in the Vaal Reef mining disaster of 10 May 1995. She was president of the South African Institute of Race Relations, one of the premier research institutions in SA.

Speaking in 2004 at the age of 86, Suzman confessed that she was disappointed by the African National Congress. Suzman stated:

:"I had hoped for something much better... [t]he poor in this country have not benefited at all from the ANC. This government spends 'like a drunken sailor'. Instead of investing in projects to give people jobs, they spend millions buying weapons and private jets, and sending gifts to Haiti."

Referring to South Africa's relations with Zimbabwe, whose president Robert Mugabe had in 2001 declared Suzman an "enemy of the state", she said:

:"Mugabe has destroyed that country while South Africa has stood by and done nothing. The way Mugabe was feted at the inauguration last month was an embarrassing disgrace. But it served well to illustrate very clearly Mbeki's point of view."

Suzman also stated her distrust of the racial politics of Mbeki:

:"Don't think for a moment that Mbeki is not anti-white – he is, most definitely. His speeches all have anti-white themes and he continues to convince everyone that there are two types of South African – the poor black and the rich white."

She opposed economic sanctions, claiming it would be counterproductive and harmful to poor blacks, while many black in the anti-apartheid struggle argued that sanctions could not make things worse than they already were for Blacks.

Some in the ANC and SACP were critical of her method of opposition to apartheid. She was denounced as an agent of colonialism and "part of the system" for her vocal opposition to sanctions. She supported several controversial bills that limited the rights of Black South Africans, purportedly because, as she had the habit of saying about such bills, it "represented a step in the right direction".

Suzman was awarded 27 honorary doctorates from universities around the world, including from Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Cambridge. but the Nobel Committee preferred to reward the less controversial Desmond Tutu in 1984, and she received numerous other awards from religious and human rights organisations around the world. Former Queen of South Africa, Elizabeth II made her an honorary Dame Commander (Civil Division) of the Order of the British Empire in 1989.

Suzman was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2008.

Liberia issued a postage stamp to honour Suzman in March 2011, calling her one of the legendary heroes of Africa.

In November 2017, the South African Post Office announced that it "has honoured this great, brave and pioneering woman with a rare gesture of a postage stamp" as an "indication of her importance to the country and to the liberation thereof and to that of women".

The Progressive Federal Party of which Suzman was the sole Parliamentary representative between 1961 and 1973 became the Democratic Party after merging with the National Democratic Movement and the Independent Party in 1989. The Democratic Party was renamed the Democratic Alliance (DA) in 2000. In November 2017, former DA leader Mmusi Maimane paid tribute to Suzman, noting that "Every value we call our own in the DA can be traced back to the principles Helen fought for over her 36-year-long career as a Member of Parliament".

The poet George Szirtes wrote the poem "Song" in her honor.

The Helen Suzman Foundation was founded in 1993 to honour the life work of Helen Suzman. The Foundation seeks to promote the values espoused by Helen Suzman throughout her public life and in her devotion to public service.

In 2024, at the South African Jewish Board of Deputies' 120th anniversary gala dinner, she was honoured among 100 remarkable Jewish South Africans who have contributed to South Africa. The ceremony included speeches from Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, and Suzman was honoured with other anti-apartheid activists, Nadine Gordimer, Ruth First, Rusty Bernstein, Arthur Goldreich and Joe Slovo.

Death

Suzman died in her sleep of natural causes on 1 January 2009. She was 91 years old. Achmat Dangor, the Nelson Mandela Foundation chief executive, said Suzman was a "great patriot and a fearless fighter against apartheid". Flags in South Africa flew at half-mast in her honour. She was buried in a private Jewish ceremony at Westpark Cemetery in Johannesburg led by chief rabbi Warren Goldstein.

See also

  • List of South Africans
  • List of Jews from Sub-Saharan Africa
  • Progressive Party

References

Bibliography

  • Joanna Strangwayes-Booth: A Cricket in the Thorn Tree: Helen Suzman and the Progressive Party. Johannesburg Hutchinson Group, 1976.
  • Ed. Robin Lee, Values Alive. A Tribute to Helen Suzman. Johannesburg, Jonathan Ball, 1990.
  • Ed. Phyllis Lewson, Helen Suzman's Solo Years. Johannesburg, Jonathan Ball and A.D Donker, 1991.
  • Helen Suzman: In No Uncertain Terms: A South African Memoir. New York, Knopf, 1993.
  • Exhib. Catalogue Helen Suzman: Fighter for Human Rights. Cape Town, South African Jewish Museum publ Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies, UCT, 2005,
  • Helen Suzman Foundation: Focus: Tribute Issue 48, December 2007,
  • Helen Suzman Foundation: Focus: Suzman Tribute Edition, Issue 53, April 2009,
  • Gillian Godsell, Helen Suzman (Series: They Fought for Freedom), Cape Town, Maskew Miller Longman, 2011.
  • Robin Renwick: Helen Suzman: Bright Star in a Dark Chamber. London, Biteback Publ., 2014.
  • 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, 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
  • Scott Bobb, "Anti-Apartheid Activist Helen Suzman Dies at 91" Voice of America
  • "Helen Suzman, Anti-Apartheid Leader, Dies at 91", The New York Times, 1 January 2009
  • "Helen Suzman: The woman who changed a nation" M&G