November 17: Helen Suzman

Anti-apartheid activist and politician Helen Suzman was born on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa on this date in 1917. Suzman was a member of Parliament from 1953 to 1989. She founded the liberal Progressive Party in 1959 and was its lone representative in the all-white Parliament for 13 years, during which time she often used her parliamentary immunity to speak out against apartheid in a manner that broke the law. She was never arrested or “banned,” but she was subject to death threats and very public insults, some of them anti-Semitic. Suzman was also criticized from the left for her opposition to economic sanctions against the apartheid system: “I don’t see how wrecking the economy of the country will ensure a more stable and just society,” she said in 1986. In 1967, she made her first trip to Robben Island to visit the imprisoned Nelson Mandela — a trip she repeated several times in later years. “It was an odd and wonderful sight to see this courageous woman peering into our cells and strolling around our courtyard,” Mandela said after his 27-year imprisonment. “She was the first and only woman ever to grace our cells.”
“They write to me in their hundreds, asking for help over pass problems, housing problems, jobs, bursaries, trading licences . . . I get dozens of pathetic letters that are smuggled out of jail, and many appeals for help from banned people. Sometimes I manage to get conditions alleviated, often not.” —Helen Suzman