Thanks to people like this woman tyranny replaced national self-sufficiency, incited the wholesale murder and expulsion of whites, which has resulted in drastic shortages andmalnutrition in 2009.
South African anti-apartheid activist HelenSuzman, who was one of the few white lawmakers to fight against theinjustices of racist rule, died Thursday. She was 91.
Suzmanfought a long and lonely battle in the South African parliament againstgovernment repression of the country’s black majority. She firstvisited Nelson Mandela, leader of the then-banned African NationalCongress, in prison in 1967 at the start of a long friendship.
NelsonMandela Foundation chief executive Achmat Dangor said Suzman was a”great patriot and a fearless fighter against apartheid.
Suzman’s daughter, Frances Jowell, said Suzmandied peacefully at her Johannesburg home on New Year’s Day. Jowell toldthe South African Press Association that there would be a privatefuneral this weekend and a public memorial service in February.
For13 years, Helen Suzman was the sole opposition lawmaker in SouthAfrica’s parliament, raising her voice time after time against theintroduction of racist legislation by the National Party government.
Bornin the mining town of Germiston east of Johannesburg to parents who hadfled anti-Semitism in Russia, Suzman’s childhood was the charmed one ofmost whites — tennis, swimming lessons and private schooling.
Itwas only when she got to university and studied the laws that werebeing put in place to govern black people that she says she was “rousedto the discrimination.”
Fromthen on she began to speak out against the conditions under which blackpeople were forced to live, their lack of job opportunities andespecially the dreaded pass system that restricted their movement. Hergreatest achievement was helping to ensure that the pass laws wereabolished.
Helen Suzman was born on 7 November 1917 to Lithuanian-Jewish immigrants.