Helen Suzman

Helen Suzman (nee Helen Gavronsky; born November 7, 1917 in Germiston, South Africa, † 1 January 2009 Johannesburg) was a South African politician of the liberal Progressive Federal Party. She was for many years the only woman in Parliament and the only representative of the opposition that came against the policy of apartheid 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 had emigrated at the age of 17 or 18 years from a shtetl in Kurkliai to South Africa. Her mother died two weeks after her birth. Her father, a merchant, came to South Africa as a meat wholesaler to prosperity. After attending a religious school Helen studied economics at the University of Witwatersrand. At 19, she married Moses Meyer Suzman the doctor ( 1904-1994 ) with whom she had two daughters, Frances ( b. 1939 ) and Patricia ( b. 1943 ). In 1940, she graduated from the university with a Bachelor of Commerce, worked from 1941 to 1944 at the South African War Supplies Board and until 1952 as a lecturer in economic history at the University of Witwatersrand.

Political action

1946 Helen Suzman used in by the government under Jan Smuts ( United Party ) Native Laws Commission was (also Fagan Commission) appointed who should investigate the living conditions of blacks in the major cities. The lessons from this experience motivated her to increasingly politically active. When the National Party in 1948, the government took over and began the construction of the apartheid state, Helen Suzman of the United Party (UP) concurred. 1953 she won unanimously the constituency of Houghton Estate, a suburb of Johannesburg, and first attracted to the South African Parliament in Cape Town one. She was one of a small liberal wing, which in 1959 abspalte of the UP. Along with eleven other liberal-minded deputies she founded under the leadership of Jan van A. Steytler the Progressive Party (PP).

From 1961 to 1974 she was the only Member of the Progressive Party, later 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 belonged from 1977 to the leaders of the PFP next party leader Colin Eglin. Although the PFP could not prevent the repressive apartheid laws, Suzman became a symbol of white opposition in South Africa and the " conscience of the nation ".

Helen Suzman argued for the abolition of apartheid and the right to vote for non-whites and fought for the African National Congress ( ANC). She sat down against the death penalty and against the discrimination of women whose status in the customary law of the South African Society of the " eternal minors" ( "perpetual minors ' ) was. 1988 Suzman was instrumental in the adoption of Marriage Act, which significantly improved the legal position of women. Although she belonged to a wealthy white constituency, she saw herself as always you did not miss any opportunity to speak and ask for the prisoners of the regime set to " Ombudsman for all those people who have no voice in Parliament. "; the responses of the government in parliament were often the only source of information in the heavily censored public of apartheid. Helen Suzman was a good speaker with biting wit, which used Parliament as a platform to denounce the scale of the inhumanity of the apartheid system. To the objection of a parliamentarian, share it only matters to bring South Africa abroad in embarrassment, she replied: "It is not my questions that are embarrassing for South Africa - there are your answers."

Multiple visited Nelson Mandela in prison on Robben Iceland before Cape Town.

" It was strange and wonderful to see this courageous woman, when she came into our cells and the prison lacked. She was the first and only woman who ever came into our cells. "

The poet Breyten Breytenbach also detained described it as " Our Lady of the Prisoners. "

In August 1986 Helen Suzman was briefly detained when she met with Winnie Mandela in Soweto for talks, where it came to a resistance tactics against government policies.

In 1989, she withdrew from the parliamentary politics back after they had listened to the südfrikanischen Parliament a total of 36 years but remained politically active. After the abolition of apartheid in the early 1990s, Helen Suzman was considered the "Grande Dame " of the Republic. In 1994 she was a member of the Independent Commission, which oversaw the first democratic elections in South Africa. Even then they still criticized the government policies, including President Thabo Mbeki on AIDS policy and its attitude towards the government in Zimbabwe.

When she died at the age of 91 years in 2009, declared the Nelson Mandela Foundation, South Africa had a " lost great patriot and a fearless fighter against apartheid. "

Awards

  • 27 honorary doctorates from numerous universities worldwide, including Oxford, Cambridge, Yale and Harvard
  • 1978: Human Rights Award of the United Nations
  • 1988: Moses - Mendelssohn Prize of the Berlin Senate.
  • 1989: " Dame Commander" of the Order of the British Empire
  • 2002: "Price of Freedom " of the Liberal International
  • Federal Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
  • Two-fold nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize

English-language publications (selection)

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