- Helen Suzman
Infobox Politician
name = Helen Suzman
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office =Member of Parliament
term_start = 1953
term_end = 1989
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birth_date = Birth date and age|1917|11|7
birth_place = Germiston,Gauteng ,South Africa
death_date =
death_place =
party = United Party
Progressive PartyProgressive Reform Party
Progressive Federal Party
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footnotes =Helen Suzman, born Helen Gavronsky (
7 November ,1917 inGermiston, Gauteng ,South Africa ), was an anti-apartheid activist andpolitician . She studied as an economist and statistician atWitwatersrand University . Suzman was the daughter ofLithuania n-Jewish immigrants.She married Dr. Moses Suzman when she was 20, and had two daughters with him before returning to university as a lecturer in 1944. She gave up teaching for politics, being elected to Parliament 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.
Suzman was noted for her strong public criticism of the governing National Party's policies of
apartheid at a time when this was unusual amongst whites, and found herself even more of an outsider by virtue of being an English-speaking Jewish woman in a parliament dominated byCalvinist 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". [ [http://www.hsf.org.za/shelen2.asp The Helen Suzman Foundation] ]Later, as parliamentary white opposition to apartheid grew, the Progressive Party 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 numerous times in prison, and was at his side when he signed the new constitution in 1996.She was voted #24 on the Top 100 Great South Africans.
ee also
*
List of South Africans
*List of Jews from Sub-Saharan Africa
*Progressive Party (South Africa) References
Suzman, Helen. "In No Uncertain Terms: A South African Memoir." New York: Knopf, 1993. ISBN 0679409858
External links
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/01/2007_48_thu.shtml Helen Suzman] (BBC radio programme)
* [http://www.cotesaintluc.org/en/HumanRightsWalkway2007 Helen Suzman honoured in Côte Saint-Luc] , Quebec Canada
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