JOHANNESBURG – Helen Suzman, one of South Africa’s foremost anti-apartheid campaigners, died yesterday at the age of 91.
Ms Suzman, the daughter of Jewish immigrants, was for 36 years South Africa’s most famous white crusader against apartheid, waging an often lonely and fierce parliamentary battle to enfranchise the black majority.
She became one of the few whites to earn respect from black South Africans when she started making regular prison visits to see Nelson Mandela, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation said yesterday that South Africa had lost a “great patriot and a fearless fighter against apartheid”.
Recalling Ms Suzman’s first visit to B-Section of Robben Island prison in 1967, Mandela once said: “It was an odd and wonderful sight to see this courageous woman peering into our cells and strolling around our courtyard. She was the first and only woman ever to grace our cells.”
Ms Suzman and Mr Mandela, who was released from prison in 1990, became close friends after he was elected South Africa’s first black president in 1994. Ms Suzman was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize twice and won praise from human rights organisations from around the world.
The frail-looking champion of non-white rights was the longest-serving member of the country’s white parliament. She retired in May 1989.
A member of the liberal Progressive Federal Party for much of her career, she was regularly jeered in parliament with taunts such as “Go back to Moscow” or “Go back to Israel” – a reference to her Jewish heritage. Her arch foe President PW Botha dubbed her “Mother Superior” in sarcastic reference to her scolding attacks on the Nationalists.
The enmity was mutual.
In one parliamentary exchange in which Mr Botha warned her against breaking the law, she said he would never bully her.
“I am not frightened of you. I never have been and I never will be. I think nothing of you.”
She once said of Mr Botha: “If he was female he would arrive in parliament on a broomstick.”
The pair did not speak to each other for years and Mr Botha remarked: “She intercedes for the people who want to bring this country to its knees.”
Ms Suzman stepped down from parliament in 1989 but she remained outspoken, criticising the post-apartheid ANC. She also took a tough line on Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe.
“A perverse ‘honour’, of which she is inordinately proud, was being declared an ‘Enemy of the State’ by Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe in 2001,” said her foundation in a profile of her. – (Reuters)