Born: November 7, 1917, Germiston, South Africa
Helen Suzman is a South African politician and outspoken opponent of apartheid, South Africa’s system of racial separation. Born Helen Gavronsky in Germiston, in what is now Gauteng province, northeastern South Africa, of Jewish immigrant parents, she was educated at the Parktown Convent until 1933 and then attended the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. In 1937, she married Moses Meyer Suzman, and they settled in Johannesburg. During World War II (1939-1945) she worked for the War Supplies Board. She joined the United Party (UP) in 1949 and became a well-known speaker as honourary information officer, before being elected as the party’s member of parliament (MP) for the Johannesburg suburb of Houghton in April 1953.
In 1959, the party was split between conservatives and progressives following the party’s decision to oppose further land allocations for blacks. Eleven of its progressive members resigned, including Suzman. In August 1959, they formed the new Progressive Party (PP), but in the general election of 1961 only Suzman was returned to Parliament to be the sole PP representative there for the next 13 years. She was a staunch opponent of the Nationalist Party government’s racially biased policies, sometimes being the only voice in Parliament raised against new oppressive legislation. She retained her seat in the elections of 1966 and 1970, and only in 1974 was she joined by seven more Progressive Party MPs. The PP continued to increase its strength in Parliament, and the new members took much of the burden of opposition from Suzman. During the 1970s, with the terminal decline of the UP, the PP and the Reform Party merged in 1977 to become the Progressive Federal Party (PFP). As the party with the second-largest representation in Parliament, the PFP was the official opposition party.
Suzman traveled extensively in the United States and Europe, and in 1971, with PP leader Colin Eglin, she visited Senegal, Gambia, Sierra Leone and Tanzania, an almost unheard of event for a white South African MP. She has received many awards from universities in Britain, the United States, and South Africa. In 1985 and 1986 she lost considerable support inside and outside South Africa for opposing international sanctions against South Africa on the grounds that these would encourage a siege mentality; she argued instead for internal black boycotts. Suzman retired from Parliament in 1989, just before the dismantling of apartheid began. She was one of 11 veteran South African figures of all races chosen to sit on the Independent Electoral Commission, which was appointed by the Transitional Executive Council that was set up in December 1993 to oversee the transition to majority rule.
