Helen Suzman
Helen Suzman, one of the leading white South African opponents of apartheid, has died:
After entering politics in 1953, Suzman became a lawmaker for the United Party, which split six years later over disagreements on racial issues. Suzman and 11 other MPs left to form the Progressive Party, which rejected the white-minority Nationalist government’s racist policies and supported equal rights. [...]
From 1961 until 1974, Suzman was “the only MP who consistently and unequivocally opposed discriminatory legislation and the spate of security laws that left the rule of law in tatters,” according to the HSF Web site.
Suzman’s criticism of Pieter Willem Botha, who served as prime minister and president from 1978 to 1989, led him to describe her as “a vicious little cat,” HSF said. Botha was the last hard-line apartheid leader who upheld strict policies of racial desegregation. Suzman described him as “an obnoxious bully.”
Once in parliament, a minister accused her of asking questions that embarrassed the country and she replied “It is not my questions that embarrass South Africa, it is your answers.” A worthy motto for dissidents and question-askers everywhere. Meanwhile, it doesn’t really make a ton of sense but I’m always heartened by the fact that Jewish South Africans such as Suzman were disproportionately represented in the anti-apartheid movement.
43 Responses to “Helen Suzman”
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January 1st, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Indeed an inspiring woman, and a tribute to Human Rights and Democracy. We often talk about what is wrong in this world, but once in a while it is good to remember how much progress the human race has made.
Happy New Year.
January 1st, 2009 at 5:31 pm
I was not familiar with Suzman before reading her NYT obit this afternoon but, wow, what an inspiration. I know many of us would like to believe we would act just as she did if faced with similar circumstances, but I fear in reality we would not.
If anyone knows of any good books or articles about her life and career I would appreciate the reference; would love to read more about this remarkable woman.
January 1st, 2009 at 5:41 pm
In the future after the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is settled I hope we can celebrate those Israelis who objected to how Palestinians are treated the same way.
January 1st, 2009 at 6:00 pm
The anti-Afrikanism on this blog is sickening. There is not, and has never been, a Zulu nation. The fundamental right of white South Africans to exist is again being called into question, with liberal apologists like Yglesias and Klein leading the charge with their BAP friends.
January 1st, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Do you happen to know how many of the anti-apartheid Jews remained in South Africa after majority rule? Compared to the Boers, and other gentile whites? I would guess that most of them have left (and have an easier time securing visas) but I may completely wrong about this.
January 1st, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Thanks for the humor Marty!
“It is not my questions that embarrass South Africa, it is your answers.” – That really is a great quote.
January 1st, 2009 at 6:08 pm
“Meanwhile, it doesn’t really make a ton of sense but I’m always heartened by the fact that Jewish South Africans such as Suzman were disproportionately represented in the anti-apartheid movement.”
Is this a minefield or what? I myself, am neither personally proud or chagrined by people of Irish descent who exhibit exceptional heroism or villainy.
But I find it difficult to shake a mild, mostly positive, essentialism about Jews. I actively try to fight other essentialisms, even to the extent of trying to deny the effect of culture(s) on “peoples” I like, a little, the Scandanavians & French. And Canadians are all just horrible people.
Is this what you meant? Probably not, Harvard trustfund scumbag.
January 1st, 2009 at 6:18 pm
“From 1961 until 1974, Suzman was “the only MP who consistently and unequivocally opposed discriminatory legislation and the spate of security laws that left the rule of law in tatters,” according to the HSF Web site.”
Not at all certain of the details of South African politics, but my first guess is that Suzman’s constituency deserves some small cred.
January 1st, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Suzman at Wiki
“She switched to the liberal Progressive Party in 1959, and represented the Houghton constituency as that party’s sole member of parliament, and the sole parliamentarian unequivocally opposed to apartheid, from 1961 to 1974.”
Did that community suffer any consequences? Or was she useful for other kinds of coalitions?
Behind every great leader is an enabling constituency, who don’t get nominated for Nobels.
January 1st, 2009 at 7:14 pm
It’s incredible that she was alone in her dissent for so long; it must have been particularly hard to remain defiant and in office for so long.
January 1st, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Houghton is apparently a “very wealthy” suburb of Johannesburg.
January 1st, 2009 at 7:37 pm
“it must have been particularly hard to remain defiant and in office for so long.”
See where the focus is.
I am thinking of a young Afrikaner schoolteacher in Houghton who travels across Johannesberg to a family dinner and gets asked:”However can you vote for that woman?”
Now that schoolteacher didn’t get the threats and phonecalls, but she didn’t get 27 honorary degrees either. But the schoolteacher (or whoever) is why Suzman remained in office so long.
January 1st, 2009 at 8:17 pm
Suzman could have done more to fight apartheid, of course, by refusing to participate in the government and instead joining the illegal struggle (either through peaceful civil disobedience or through armed struggle). By participating as a member of Parliament, she implicitly lent legitimacy to an evil regime.
That doesn’t mean she was a bad person, of course, she appears to have been a person of exceptional virtue of courage. But while her virtue and courage are not open to question, her judgment is, and points to the limits of a meliorist approach to evil.
January 1st, 2009 at 8:19 pm
On balance, Mr. Yglesias, I apologize for that last comment. One should not speak evil of the dead, and although I wasn’t intending to suggest that Ms. Suzman was evil in any way, I can see how that would be taken as ‘damning with faint praise.’
January 1st, 2009 at 8:49 pm
Hector’s rather interesting philosophy here clearly corresponds as well to any pro-life politician whose views he agrees with for participating in a government that sponsors what Hector considers state-approved mass murder of babies. Right? I mean, that has to outweigh apartheid on any kind of reasonable harm scale if that’s really what one believes about abortion (which would make a South Africa that allowed no abortions ever less evil than every modern country, but I digress).
So, clearly these politicians should be “joining the illegal struggle” instead of “implicitly len[ding] legitimacy to an evil regime”, yes? In Hector’s world, in fact, there would ideally be no pro-life politicians at all, right? Just a bunch of illegal strugglers? Just want to clear this up.
January 1st, 2009 at 9:10 pm
that’s too bad; when i was fourteen the half-Indian girl, her mother, and i protested that south african deal
they lived in this old west house with purple trim over the hill; her father (the Indian) ran the mental hospital (or was the head doctor, or whatever)
January 1st, 2009 at 10:22 pm
The constituency question is an interesting one, and it backs up Matthew’s point about Jewish participation in the anti-apartheid struggle.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/helen-suzman-south-african-parliamentarian-who-waged-a-36year-battle-against-the-injustices-of-apartheid-1221039.html
“In 1953 she stood as the party’s candidate in Houghton, Johannesburg, a constituency with a high proportion of affluent Jewish voters. She was to hold the seat for 36 years…
At the end of parliamentary sessions, Suzman’s report-back meetings in her Houghton constituency, where her majority climbed with each election, were always packed.”
January 1st, 2009 at 11:25 pm
Since the end of apartheid, South Africa has undergone a creeping Zimbabwe-ization: years of an HIV-AIDS denier as president who permitted one of the highest AIDS rates in Africa, followed by a rapist, war-zone crime levels, failure to maintain sanitation and prevent cholera, the exodus of skilled workers in response to violence and economic empowerment measures, anti-immigrant violence, support of Mugabe’s destruction of Zimbabwe, and now the creeping expulsion of white farmers in South Africa.
Here are some embarrassing questions: would the people of Zimbabwe be better off if Rhodesia had never been overthrown by Mugabe with Western support? Would the welfare of the black population of South Africa (including all the people who have died or will die of HIV/AIDS) be better if the apartheid regime had survived? The answers would depend on how much you value the pride of independence and freedom from oppression by another racial group relative to freedom from death by random thugs or disease.
Likewise, India would probably be better off if it had remained a British colony and enjoyed its current economic boom in the postwar period, instead of decades of socialist-driven poverty (including tens or perhaps hundreds of millions of deaths due to war, famine, and disease that could have been avoided with a Hong-Kong style administration). Should we consider Gandhi one of the great tragedies of the 20th century?
January 2nd, 2009 at 1:15 am
“Likewise, India would probably be better off if it had remained a British colony ”
Have you ever been to India? It’s not pretty, but it’s fucked up because of the Raj. When you try to deal with the ridiculous bureaucracy in India, you realize that this is what England brought to India. Before I ever went to India, I thought the Raj was good. But the more I go to India, the more I hate the English. Hopefully, the Indians can rid themselves of stupid English nonsense. Maybe they can create a country that has no English influence at all. The English are people who had the largest empire ever, and now their just a small island. And you think they should control India? You’re fucking crazy. Unless you think really bad strategy is a good thing. But then you’d be crazy.
January 2nd, 2009 at 1:42 am
Scott Says:
January 1st, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Do you happen to know how many of the anti-apartheid Jews remained in South Africa after majority rule? Compared to the Boers, and other gentile whites? I would guess that most of them have left (and have an easier time securing visas) but I may completely wrong about this.
The “brain drain” out of Africa is a real problem. Anecdotally, however, at my high school in the mid-90’s there were three different jewish families originally from SA, and I knew a couple more who were within my parents’ professional circles, all of whom had emigrated during the Botha years. I always understood that they left because of shame over Apartheid, not its repeal.
January 2nd, 2009 at 2:11 am
Schwerner, Chaney & Goodman say Yes! to Matt’s (and my_ irrational, ineluctable pride.
January 2nd, 2009 at 3:19 am
Matt,
If South Africa ends up going the way of Zimbabwe, will you publish a post saying:
“Meanwhile, it doesn’t really make a ton of sense but I’m ashamed of the fact that Jewish South Africans such as Suzman were disproportionately represented in the anti-apartheid movement.”
January 2nd, 2009 at 3:58 am
Three small disjointed points relevant to Suzman that are worth noting:
1) She was an extraordinarily articulate woman even unto the end. She was a person of some depth and not simply a party player. That makes her more worthy and interesting in my eyes.
2) The moral issues vis a vis South Africa are complicated. Everything that can be said regarding the immorality of the Apartheid policy has already been said and is the common view of almost all readers here so it’s hardly worth reiterating. Those points are true, valid and deep. It is also true however that the change Suzman helped bring about resulted in some extraordinarily terrible things. The gross national happiness of the country’s people may be lower today than it was in the days of apartheid and it’s almost certain that the gross national crime rate is higher – particularly against Whites. The fact that Americans’ view of the thing is so one-sided is nothing to be proud of. There may indeed be a great deal more righteousness on the Suzman/Mandela side but until you’ve taken a clear-eyed, honest and personal look at the thing it would be hard to know for sure.
3) As godmother of the white fight for black liberation in South Africa, Helen Suzman was not simply a woman who happens to have been Jewish. It’s instructive to note that among colleagues in similar battles around the world she was simply one of a plurality of Jewish people. It’s further instructive to note that those leading figures were simply the above-water tip of an iceberg that represented the view and fight of the Jewish masses (as in Helen’s case for example, where her supporters and voters were largely Jewish – despite the fact that supporting her was largely politically, personally and economically dangerous to them personally). It’s perhaps of even greater interest to note that this Jewish support for the downtrodden is almost exclusively done on behalf of groups that are not Jewish. The most powerful minority group in the United States during the time of the Holocaust was the Jewish minority. Jews were powerful in politics, business, literature and Hollywood yet they did not champion the cause of their cousins being murdered across the pond though they easily could have done so. Furthermore, Israel’s fiercest detractors and most efficient enemy activists in democratic nations around the world are Jewish as well, despite the serious existential threat that Israel faces from hundreds of millions of people who would regard it a moral good to indiscriminately murder its citizens.
These three unrelated points worthy of being known and considered…
mnuez
January 2nd, 2009 at 6:49 am
A group of South African ANC Jews visited Israel and the Occupied Territories, and one of them reports,
“We visited Nablus, passing through one of the many checkpoints within the occupied territory which Palestinians have to pass through each time they enter or leave town as they go about their daily life. They have to disembark, unload their goods and get transport on the other side. We saw separate networks of roads in Palestinian territory for use by Palestinians and Israelis, who have different coloured number plates. I was shocked to see a sick man carried across the checkpoint on a stretcher because the car in which he was being ferried was not allowed through the checkpoint.” …
“In Hebron we visited a woman whose life is being made increasingly difficult in her own home by Israeli settlers who have settled nearby, damaging her home and making it difficult to leave her home to go to the doctor. We walked down a deserted street in what was the commercial centre of the city. Palestinians are not allowed to walk on that street and have to use the back doors of their houses to get out. We were harassed by settlers who continuously shouted at us through a megaphone, and when we objected to the police and asked them to do something they arrested our Israeli guides.”
http://www.humanrightsdelegation.org/press_item.asp?id=26&page=1
There is another report in French,
http://www.humanrightsdelegation.org/press_item.asp?id=24&page=1
“”Les non-Blancs vivaient dans des zones séparées, mais il n’y a jamais eu en Afrique du Sud de routes séparées, de “barrière de sécurité”, de check-points, de plaques d’immatriculation différentes, de cantonnements dans des zones délimitées”, s’étonne cette députée de l’ANC. “Tout cela est absurde et je me demande jusqu’où cela va aller, ce que ça va donner”, s’interroge Barbara Hogan, qui se dit “choquée” par ce qu’elle a vu dans les rues de Hébron : “l’injustice, la haine, le désespoir”. Elle se souvient de “la crainte dans les yeux des enfants”, du silence régnant dans les rues du camp de Balata, à Naplouse. “Cette ville est assiégée. Les militaires contrôlent toutes les collines, tous les check-points. On ne peut pas entrer et sortir comme l’on veut. Cela n’a jamais existé en Afrique du Sud”, ajoute Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, ancienne vice-ministre de la santé et députée de l’ANC.”
January 2nd, 2009 at 8:11 am
Adam,
Don’t be ridiculous. There is a time for peaceful participation, and a time for armed struggle. The United States in 2009 is clearly in the first category, and South Africa in the 1960s was in the second. The chances of, say, the army taking over Washington D.C. and abolishing abortion by decree are approximately nil. Hence, we need to participate in the political process. (First though, we really need to change the culture).
Holy Cow, don’t be idiotic. India in the 1950s needed more socialism, not less. Most of their problems today stem from the fact that there was never enough done to help the poor, especially the rural poor, through things like land reform and redistribution of wealth. (Yes there was expropriation of the large estates in a few states, and on a national level under Indira Gandhi, but she wsn’t around long enough for it to amount to much.)
Fostert, I also disagree with you. If we view a socially just, educated, industrialized society as the final end, then it’s likely that India could not have gotten there without British colonialism. Can you imagine Nehruvian socialism evolving out of an India plagued by the caste system, decadent monarchies, and the feudal zamindar system? Marx made this point, and at least to a certain degree he had a point. The British, to their credit, did a lot for education and infrastructure in India, and helped break the power of old oppressive hierarchies. One of their greatest faults, indeed, is that they didn’t do _more_ to wipe out landlordism, monarchy and the caste system particularly in the 25% of the country ruled by the princes. I’m of Indian origin myself but I would almost certainly have sided with the British in the rebellion of 1857. India needed the British in 1857, just as much as it was ready to be rid of them in 1947.
January 2nd, 2009 at 8:45 am
How could we all have forgotten the glorious victory of the anti-apartheid army as it swept the government forces out of Johannesburg and forced them to surrender?
January 2nd, 2009 at 9:15 am
Read up on the history of the British occupation of India. There were repeated famines in India over the period, every few decades. The most recent was the Bengal famine during WWII where the British used rice production for the war effort rather than feed the Bengalis. There hasn’t been another since independence.
Then there was the famous “Salt Wall” which divided India into two so that the British could collect a salt tax paid by the poorest.
January 2nd, 2009 at 9:52 am
Add Joe Slovo (born Yossel Mashal Slovo in Obelei, Lithuania) to the list of of South African Jews theat Matthew can take an irrational, but very human, pride in.
On the other side, think of Percy Yutar, the man who prosecuted Nelson Mandela.
Peter beinert, a South African Jew, and one of Peretz’ Bright Young Things (who also, oddly, once drank out of a Juicebox) once wrote a really really good article on Yutar, Slovo, and South African Jews. I strongly recommend it.
January 2nd, 2009 at 10:00 am
Throughout his life, Jews have been at Nelson Mandella’s side. He has publicly, acknowledged this since his prison release. Out of law school, the only White firm that was willing to hire him was a “Jewish” one.
Please clarify: In your opinion what doesn’t “make a ton of sense“?
That you are “always heartened“?
or perhaps “the fact that Jewish South Africans such as Suzman were disproportionately represented in the anti-apartheid movement“?
January 2nd, 2009 at 1:22 pm
At Marty Perez’s site TNR, you find a “Best of TNR 2008″. What is it about? A nobody called Ron Paul. Talk about a waste for repetitive stress injury.
January 2nd, 2009 at 3:25 pm
“Read up on the history of the British occupation of India. There were repeated famines in India over the period, every few decades. The most recent was the Bengal famine during WWII where the British used rice production for the war effort rather than feed the Bengalis. There hasn’t been another since independence.”
If it weren’t for the work of the American crop scientist Norman Borlaug there most assuredly would have been more famines in India since independence. Credit where credit is due.
January 2nd, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Norman Borlaug was well-intentioned, but Vandana Shiva explains why he ultimately wasn’t the hero he is made out to be. Look her up.
January 2nd, 2009 at 5:48 pm
… the United Party, which split six years later …
There something very Life of Brianesque about that phrase. Did one of the spinters operate as the Formerly United Party?
February 25th, 2009 at 2:53 am
Can you imagine the nazis in Hitler’s Germany, living around the world, fighting for integration and Civil Rights for others worldwide but yet segregation and supremacy for Germans at home? Helen Suzman supported full equal rights for blacks in South Africa all right. But at the same time she supported full supremacism for Jews in Israel. In fact, the Focus published by the Helen Suzman Foundation still actively pushes removal of the Palestinian minority from Israel. What happened to Civil Rights, Equality and Integration? The hypocrisy of Jewish Supremacism has no barriers…
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