Invitation to Quarterly Roundtable Series - Electoral Reform and Responsive Representation
About Helen Suzman
Helen Suzman was born in the mining town of Germiston on 7 November 1917 to Samuel and Frieda Gavronsky, both immigrants from Eastern Europe who had come to South Africa to escape the restrictions imposed on Jews by Russia.
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Samuel, who had considerable business
acumen, built up substantial business interests in partnership with his
brother so that Helen and her sister were able to grow up in
comfortable circumstances.
Helen attended Parktown Convent in
Johannesburg, her father having insisted on a good private-school
education for his daughters. The regime at the Convent was strict:
discipline, punctuality and learning by rote were the order of the day.
Helen attributes her good memory to the habits of rote learning
instilled into her by the nuns. The head nun, Sister Columba, who was
Irish, had a profound effect on Helen. In Helen's autobiography she
tells the story of how, in 1966, over 30 years after she had left
school, she received a phone call: an Irish voice asked to speak to
Helen, who replied, “Hello, Sister Columba”, to the nun's amazement!
The call was evidently to wish her well for the upcoming
election.
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Although never religious, Helen's Jewish origins imparted two qualities that were important: a sensitivity to the evils of discrimination, and a respect for learning and culture. From an early age until the present she has been a voracious reader and a keen patron of the arts.
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Her academic career at the university of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, began in the mid-1930s: as an attractive, vivacious and intelligent young woman it was natural that Helen found her years at Wits “carefree and wholly enjoyable” – with initially disastrous academic results. After dropping out and marrying Mosie Suzman, an eminent physician, in 1937, she returned to her studies in earnest, graduating with first-class passes in both her major subjects, Economics and Economic History. The marriage produced two daughters, Frances, an art historian, now living in London, and Patricia, a medical specialist in Boston. |
In 1945 she became a tutor in
Economic History, a position that was later converted into a
lectureship that she held until 1952, when she entered a nomination
contest for a parliamentary seat in the forthcoming 1953 election.
There is little doubt that had Helen not opted for a political career
she could have shone in academic life, or in law, in which she had
previously shown interest.
Helen's interest in politics had
grown during the 1940s, partly due to some of the subjects she had
studied at Wits and partly through her active involvement in the South
African Institute of Race Relations, a liberal organisation that
conducted research on racial issues. The shock caused by the National
Party's surprise defeat of general Jan Smuts's United Party, which had
governed South Africa since 1934, increased her interest.
