Background

Ethnicity: Helen Suzman's parents were Lithuanian Jews who had emigrated to South Africa to avoid religious persecution.

Helen Suzman was born on November 7, 1917, in Germiston, Transvaal, Union of South Africa, to Samuel and Freda Gavronsky. Her father had emigrated to South Africa from a shtetl (village) on the border of Lithuania and Latvia. He worked initially as a hides dealer but in time made a fortune in real estate. Her mother died shortly after she was born. Samuel remarried when Helen was ten years old.

Education

Helen Suzman was educated at non-Jewish schools, like Parktown Convent in Johannesburg, to which the family moved, but remained a member of the Jewish community. Later she attended the University of Witwatersrand, where she obtained a Bachelor of Commerce degree in economics and economic history in 1940.

Her study of economic history, and especially of the implications of the country's migrant labor system, on which she collected material which was submitted to the government-appointed Native Laws Commission by the South African Institute of Race Relations, encouraged her to make politics her career, to help bring about a more just economic and political order.

Career

Helen Suzman served as a statistician with the War Supplies Board from 1941 to 1944 and then returned (1945-1952) to her alma mater as a lecturer in economic history. In 1948, when the largely Afrikaner, pro-apartheid National Party won the national elections, Suzman joined the United Party, a moderate coalition of Afrikaners and English-speaking white South Africans. She first came to public attention in 1952 as a leading figure in Women's Action, an organization to mobilize women against the Nationalist government.

Later that year, she agreed, somewhat reluctantly, given her family responsibilities and job, to stand for nomination for the parliamentary seat of Houghton, a safe United Party constituency that embraced the most prosperous of Johannesburg's northern suburbs. She was elected to Parliament in 1953.

Suzman was a member of Parliament (MP) for Houghton from 1953 to 1989. As Parliament met in Cape Town, she had to stay there for up to six months each year, though her home remained in Hyde Park, Johannesburg. As an opposition member, she believed her main role was to hold the government to account. In the particular circumstances of South Africa at that time, she used the platform which Parliament provided to speak out against the horrors of apartheid, to draw public attention to those horrors, and to try to help its victims.

She also campaigned on behalf of women's rights: her first speech in Parliament, where for six years she was the only woman among 166 MPs, was in the debate on the Matrimonial Affairs Bill, an early milestone on the road to legal equality for women. She continued to fight for such equality, making major contributions in Parliament in 1975, 1984, and 1988, and pleading for the participation of more women at the first meeting of the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) in 1991.

From 1990-1993, Suzman served as president of the South African Institute of Race Relations in Johannesburg. She also served on the Independent Electoral Commission that oversaw South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994 and was a member of the Human Rights Commission (1995-1998). Suzman's own autobiographical book, In No Uncertain Terms (Knopf, 1993), with a foreword by Nelson Mandela, has been generally well-received.

Achievements

• 

  Suzman’s dedication to human rights and democracy garnered many honors and awards, and it led to the establishment of the Helen Suzman Foundation, an organization devoted to the promotion of liberal democracy. In 1996, Suzman was awarded the Politeken and Dangens Nyheters Freedom Prize, jointly with Nelson and Winnie Mandela.
  
  Helen Suzman’s life is a remarkable example of how it was necessary for her to change from academic to a politician in order to bring about the change she wanted to see. As a politician, she was awarded 27 honorary doctorates from universities around the world, was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and received countless other awards for her work against Apartheid from religious and human rights organizations around the world.
  
  She collected more awards - perhaps most notably, she was invested as a Dame of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in October 1989, the only foreign citizen to be so honored.

Works

More photos

• book

  • In No Uncertain Terms 1993
  • No Going Back 1992
  • Holding the High Ground 1991

Religion

Suzman's family was affiliated with the Great Synagogue in Johannesburg.

Politics

Six years after Suzman and 11 other liberal members of Parliament joined the United Party, they formed the aggressively anti-apartheid Progressive Party; of the 12, only Suzman was returned to office in the elections of 1961. The Progressive Federal Party of which Suzman was the sole Parliamentary representative between 1961, became the Democratic Party after merging with the National Democratic Movement and the Independent Party in 1989. In 2000, the Democratic Party was renamed and became known as the Democratic Alliance.

From 1961 to 1974 she was the sole anti-apartheid member of Parliament. Serving as an advocate for the disenfranchised, Suzman was in constant conflict with her conservative colleagues - particularly P.W. Botha - and she often cast the lone vote against an increasing number of apartheid measures. Until her retirement in 1989, Suzman remained a consistent and significant presence in the South African Parliament, though after 1974 she was no longer the sole opposition voice.

Helen Suzman became a powerful symbol of liberal opposition to apartheid within South Africa and abroad. However, some of her actions during the years of struggle have come under criticism from the liberation movements. These include the fact that she operated within parliament, an apartheid structure of the state, and that she opposed sanctions against South Africa that she felt would minimize, not maximize, eventual liberation.

The liberal values that Helen Suzman espoused have been embedded in the constitution of democratic South Africa. After she retired from parliament, she remained active in political life and was appointed to the Independent Electoral Commission charged with overseeing South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994. However, true to character, Helen Suzman has not hesitated to criticize the governments of the post-1994 period.

Views

Suzman has contributed to Jewish causes and organizations such as the Union of Jewish Women and the Women’s Benevolent Society since she believed in the Jewish value of the individual assuming responsibility for the Jewish community at large.

Quotations: "It is not my questions that embarrass South Africa; it is your answers."

"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."

"Go and see for yourself."

Personality

Helen Suzman's motto was to "Go and see for yourself."

Quotes from others about the person

• "Whenever I am downhearted and depressed at the course of events in South Africa, I have only to think of Helen Suzman and of all, she has done and endured and achieved to feel a resurgence of confidence, determination, and faith." - Harry Oppenheimer

Interests

• Sport & Clubs

  tennis, swimming

Connections

At age 20, Helen married Dr. Moses Suzman and had two daughters with him, Frances, who is now an art historian living primarily in London, and Patricia, a medical specialist in Boston.

Father:

Samuel Gavronsky

Mother:

Freda Gavronsky

Spouse:

Moses Suzman

Daughter:

Frances Jowell

Daughter:

Patricia Suzman

Friend:

Nelson Mandela

References

• Helen Suzman: Bright Star in a Dark Chamber John Carlin, author of Invictus Helen Suzman was the voice of South Africa's conscience during the darkest days of apartheid. She stood alone in parliament, confronted by a legion of highly chauvinist male politicians.
  2013
• A cricket in the thorn tree: Helen Suzman and the Progressive Party of South Africa