Submissions to the Portfolio Committee on Justice and Constitutional Development and the Portfolio Committee on Safety and Security
About Helen Suzman
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Helen won the nomination contest for the Johannesburg constituency of Houghton – a safe United Party seat – and on 14th March 1953 she became an MP. Although it was not recognised at the time, the UP was at the beginning of a long decline that would ultimately see its demise in the 1970s. It opposed apartheid, but its own policy was based on perpetuating white control, which, inevitably, meant that it was ambivalent in its opposition to the Nationalists, who won increased majorities in the 1953 and 1958 elections. Dissatisfaction with the UP's shilly-shallying on racial issues grew among the small band of liberals in the caucus. Finally, in 1959, dissatisfaction boiled over into open revolt, and 12 MPs, including Helen, broke away and subsequently formed the Progressive Party, with an openly liberal programme of extending rights to all South Africans, but with a qualified franchise. The qualifications, based on educational and property criteria, survived until 1978, although Helen had privately advocated universal adult suffrage well before this date. |
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In the general election of 1961 the Progressives were virtually wiped out: only Helen retained her seat by the slender margin of 564 votes. As she acknowledges, her victory owed much to the military precision with which her campaign manager, Max Borkum, had organised the campaign. From 1961 until 1974, when she was joined by five other Progressives, she 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. In a patriarchal society like South Africa, discrimination against women was also rife. For many years the quest for equal status was one of Helen's main concerns, and she achieved considerable success. |
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Her workload during her solitary 13 years was prodigious. She grabbed every opportunity to speak, to put parliamentary questions, and to intercede with ministers on behalf of the many hapless individuals and communities who were caught up in the merciless bureaucratic toils of apartheid. In a typical parliamentary session she spoke on average in 15 ministerial votes (in which the performance of a minister and his department was debated), participated in numerous debates on bills, and asked some 200 parliamentary questions – which elicited valuable information that she put to good use in her speeches inside and outside Parliament. In a famous exchange a certain minister shouted: “You put these questions just to embarrass South Africa overseas.” To which Helen coolly replied: “It is not my questions that embarrass South Africa – it is your answers.” Helen never forgot the lesson learned in her first election as a Progressive: that good organisation in her constituency was vital. By diligently attending to problems experienced by constituents and establishing a rapport with them by means of her post-parliamentary session report-backs, she established a virtually impregnable support-base in Houghton. |
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But it was not only her constituents
that Helen served: I seem to have become the honorary ombudsman for all those people who have no vote and no MP – 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 gaol, and many appeals for help from banned people. Sometimes I manage to get conditions alleviated – often not. But my desk here in Cape Town is a sad harvest of the seeds of apartheid. |
