Helen Suzman

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Helen Suzman, 1959

Helen Suzman (born Helen Gavronsky on November 7, 1917 in Germiston , South Africa ; died on January 1, 2009 in Johannesburg ) was a South African politician for the liberal Progressive Federal Party . For many years she was the only woman in parliament and the only representative of the opposition to stand up against apartheid policies and for the rights of the black population.

Life

Helen Suzman was the daughter of Frieda (1888-1917) and Samuel (1888-1965) Gavronsky, both Lithuanian Jews who emigrated to South Africa from a shtetl in Kurkliai when they were 17 or 18 years old . Her mother died two weeks after she was born. Her father, a merchant, grew up as a meat wholesaler in South Africa. After attending a religious school, Helen studied economics at the University of Witwatersrand . At 19 she married the doctor Moses Meyer Suzman (1904-1994) and had two daughters with him, Frances (* 1939) and Patricia (* 1943). In 1940 she completed her studies with a Bachelor of Commerce, worked from 1941 to 1944 for the South African War Supplies Board and until 1952 as a lecturer in economic history at the University of Witwatersrand.

Political activity

The parliamentary group of the Progressive Party , 1960

In 1946 Helen Suzman was appointed to the Native Laws Commission (also Fagan Commission ) set up by the government under Jan Smuts ( United Party ) , which was supposed to investigate the living conditions of blacks in large cities. The experiences they gained motivated them to become increasingly politically active. When the National Party took over in 1948 and began building the apartheid state, Helen Suzman joined the United Party (UP). In 1953 she unanimously won the constituency of Houghton Estate, a suburb of Johannesburg, and entered the South African parliament in Cape Town for the first time . It belonged to a small liberal wing that split off from the UP in 1959. Together with eleven other liberal MPs, she founded the Progressive Party (PP) under the leadership of Jan van A. Steytler .

From 1961 to 1974 she was the only member of the Progressive Party , later the Progressive Federal Party (PFP), in the South African parliament and on top of that the only woman among 164 men.

After several mergers in the party system, Suzman was one of the leading figures of the PFP alongside party leader Colin Eglin from 1977 . Although the PFP could not prevent the repressive apartheid laws, Suzman became the symbol of South Africa's white opposition and the “conscience of the nation”.

Helen Suzman campaigned for the abolition of apartheid and the right to vote for non-whites and fought for the African National Congress (ANC). She campaigned against the death penalty and against discrimination against women, whose status in the customary law of South African society was that of "perpetual minors". In 1988 Suzman was instrumental in the enactment of a marriage law that significantly improved the legal position of women. Although she belonged to a wealthy white constituency, she always saw herself as an “ ombudswoman for all those people who have no voice in parliament.” She never missed opportunities to speak and ask questions about the regime's prisoners; the government's responses in parliament were often the only source of information in the heavily censored apartheid public. Helen Suzman was a good speaker with a sharp wit, who used Parliament as a stage to denounce the extent of the inhumanity of the apartheid system. To the objection of a member of parliament that she only asked questions to embarrass South Africa abroad, she replied: "It is not my questions that are embarrassing for South Africa - it is your answers."

She visited Nelson Mandela several times in prison on Robben Island off Cape Town.

“It was strange and wonderful to see this brave woman come into our cells and walk around the prison yard. She was the first and only woman who ever came into our cells. "

- Nelson Mandela

The poet Breyten Breytenbach , who was also imprisoned, described her as "Our Lady of the Prisoners."

In August 1986, Helen Suzman was temporarily detained when she met with Winnie Mandela in Soweto for talks about a tactic of resistance against government policy.

In 1989 she withdrew from parliamentary politics after having been a member of the South African parliament for a total of 36 years, but remained politically active. After apartheid was abolished in the early 1990s, Helen Suzman was considered the “grande dame” of the republic. In 1994 she was a member of the Independent Commission that oversaw the first democratic elections in South Africa. Even after that, she continued to criticize government policy, including President Thabo Mbeki's AIDS policy and his attitude towards the government in Zimbabwe .

When she died in 2009 at the age of 91, the Nelson Mandela Foundation declared that South Africa had lost "a great patriot and a fearless fighter against apartheid." She was buried in West Park Cemetery , Johannesburg.

Awards

English-language publications (selection)

  • With Ellison Kahn: New Lines in Native Policy , 1947.
  • Race Classification and Definitions in the Legislation of the Union of South Africa 1910–1960 , 1960.
  • South Africa at the Crossroads: Responding to the winds of change , 1978.
  • No Going Back , 1992.
  • In no uncertain terms. A South African memoir . Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1993, ISBN 978-0-679-40985-4 .

literature

  • Robin Lee (Ed.): Values ​​Alive. A Tribute to Helen Suzman . J. Ball Publishers, Johannesburg 1990, ISBN 978-0-947464-23-3 .
  • They Shaped Our Century. The Most Influential South Africans of the Twentieth Century . Human & Rousseau, Cape Town 2001, ISBN 978-0-7981-4008-9 .

Web links

Commons : Helen Suzman  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

References and comments

  1. a b c Milton Shain : Biography of Helen Suzman in the Jewish Women's Archive (English)
  2. ^ Obituary for MM Suzman in The Independent , 1994 (English), accessed September 13, 2012
  3. ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica
  4. Named after the chairman of the Native Laws Commission, Judge Henry Allen Fagan. See: Alistair Boddy-Evans: Fagan Commission and Report , African History
  5. ^ A Digest of the Fagan Report. The Native Laws (Fagan) Commission . Prepared by Helen Suzman. Johannesburg, South African Institute of Race Relations, 1948
  6. Pierre L. Van Den Berghe: South Africa, a Study in Conflict , Praeger 1980, ISBN 978-0-313-22349-5 , p. 242
  7. ^ Encyclopedia of World Biography on Helen Suzman
  8. Brigitte Kirste, Susanne Zeller, "Garden Shul" at the Cape of Good Hope , in: Jüdische Zeitung , August 2006 "Garden Shul" at the Cape of Good Hope - Visiting Jewish communities in the "Rainbow Nation" South Africa ( Memento from February 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  9. a b https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jan/01/southafrica-race
  10. a b Helen Suzman. Fighter against apartheid is dead , Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 17, 2010
  11. ^ List of previous recipients. (PDF; 43 kB) United Nations Human Rights, April 2, 2008, accessed on December 29, 2008 (English).
  12. ^ Member History: Helen Suzman. American Philosophical Society, accessed February 9, 2019 .
  13. Obituary in the time online