64 Facts About Helen Suzman

Helen Suzman, OMSG, DBE was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician.

Helen Suzman 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.

Helen Suzman hosted the meeting that founded the Progressive Party in 1959, and was its only MP in the 160-member House for thirteen years.

Helen Suzman was the only member of the South African Parliament to consistently and unequivocally oppose all apartheid legislation.

Helen Suzman was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Helen Suzman was born in Germiston, then a small mining town outside Johannesburg.

At age 19, she married Dr Moses Helen Suzman, 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.

Helen Suzman's position consisted of carefully calculating the statistical reality of various supplies, equipment quantities, and shortages of manufactured goods.

Helen Suzman then decided to leave lecturing behind to conquer the political atmosphere in South Africa.

Helen Suzman attributed this experience to her first real awareness of the hardship and difficulties experienced by Africans seeking work in urban areas.

Helen Suzman has been described in The Guardian as having had "among the most courageous Parliamentary careers ever".

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

Helen Suzman replied "And the whole world has written you off".

An eloquent public speaker with a sharp and witty manner, Helen 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.

Helen Suzman found herself even more of an outsider because she was an English-speaking Jewish woman in a parliament dominated by Calvinist Afrikaner men.

Helen Suzman was resolute in her opposition to all forms of racial discrimination.

Helen Suzman was subject to antisemitic and misogynist abuse by Nationalist MPs in Parliament and out.

Helen Suzman was often harassed by the police and her phone was tapped by them.

Helen Suzman listed her name in the phone book and often received phone calls with obscene, racist and threatening messages.

Helen Suzman had a special technique for dealing with such calls, which was to blow a shrill whistle into the mouthpiece of the phone.

Marie van Zyl, of the Kappie Kommando, wrote to Helen Suzman protesting the latter's support for "heathens" and boasting that her own people, the Voortrekkers, had brought the Bible over the mountains to the interior to the blacks.

Helen Suzman's chirping makes you deaf but the tune remains the same year in and year out.

Helen Suzman, being uprooted from her Jewish ancestry was considered a secular jew, not formally representing herself in the political efforts at hand.

Helen Suzman famously advised John Vorster, Prime Minister from 1966 to 1978, to some day visit a township, "in heavy disguise as a human being".

Later, as parliamentary white opposition to apartheid grew, the Progressive Party gained a further 6 seats and Helen Suzman was joined in parliament by notable liberal colleagues such as Colin Eglin.

Helen Suzman spent a total of 36 years in Parliament.

Helen Suzman was a frequent visitor to prisons to protect prisoners from warder brutality, and campaigned for improved prison conditions.

Helen Suzman visited Nelson Mandela on numerous occasions while he was in prison and made representations to the authorities to improve his conditions and those of other prisoners on Robben Island.

Many of the prisoners, including Neville Alexander and Mandela himself, attributed improvements to their conditions, in part, to her visits: In his autobiography, Mandela attributes the removal of the sadistic warder Van Rensberg, who had a swastika tattooed on his hand, to Helen Suzman's visit and her subsequent representations to the authorities and in Parliament.

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 Helen Suzman was on her way to see the conditions under which we were living, to see how best she could help us.

Helen 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.

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

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

Helen Suzman 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.

Helen Suzman 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.

Helen Suzman visited resettlement areas, townships and squatter camps, observing conditions and giving assistance to individuals where she could.

Helen Suzman 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".

Helen Suzman was inundated with requests for assistance from individuals harmed by the apartheid laws and bureaucracy.

Helen Suzman regarded herself as the "honorary ombudsman of the dispossessed" and sought tirelessly to make representations on their behalf to the relevant authorities.

Helen Suzman fought for equal matrimonial property rights for Black women, divorce by consent and the reform of abortion laws.

Helen Suzman was opposed to capital punishment and campaigned against its reintroduction.

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

Helen Suzman 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.

Helen Suzman was president of the South African Institute of Race Relations, one of the premier research institutions in SA.

Helen Suzman served as a member of the Human Rights Commission from 1995 to 1998.

Helen Suzman was present with Mandela when he signed the new constitution in 1996.

Helen Suzman stated her distrust of the racial politics of Mbeki:.

Helen Suzman praised her courage and credited her with improving prison conditions.

Outspoken and independent, Helen Suzman spoke out against the regime but sometimes opposed Mandela's policies.

Helen Suzman opposed economic sanctions as counterproductive and harmful to poor blacks.

Helen Suzman was denounced as an agent of colonialism and "part of the system" as well as for her failure to back sanctions.

Helen Suzman was awarded 27 honorary doctorates from universities around the world, including from Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Cambridge.

Helen Suzman was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and received numerous other awards from religious and human rights organisations around the world.

Helen Suzman was awarded the Order for Meritorious Service, Class I, Gold by Nelson Mandela in 1997.

Helen Suzman was voted No 24 in the Top 100 Great South Africans TV series.

Helen Suzman was awarded the Freedom of the City of Kingston upon Hull in 1987.

Helen Suzman was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2008.

The Progressive Federal Party of which Helen 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.

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 Helen Suzman Foundation was founded in 1993 to honour the life work of Helen Suzman.

Helen Suzman died in her sleep of natural causes on 1 January 2009.

Achmat Dangor, the Nelson Mandela Foundation chief executive, said Helen Suzman was a "great patriot and a fearless fighter against apartheid".

Helen Suzman was buried in a private Jewish ceremony at Westpark Cemetery in Johannesburg led by chief rabbi Warren Goldstein.