Helen Suzman is 90 today and people from all over South Africa and further afield will gather in Johannesburg to honour a woman who challenged the bullies of the apartheid era and spoke out fearlessly for human rights.

During her 34 years as a Member of Parliament, "liberal" was a term of abuse, as it is again in post-apartheid South Africa.

Yet Suzman's liberalism was not the fashionable neo-liberalism of Reagan and Thatcher, although she certainly did favour economic freedom. Above all, she was driven by a concern for human rights and social justice, standing up for the weak against a tyrannical, racially obsessed government.

This was the indigenous South African liberalism of Edgar Brookes and Alan Paton, opposed to racial discrimination, and it cut across the prejudiced attitudes of her generation.

Her contribution, particularly in the 13 years she was the only liberal member in an overwhelmingly hostile Parliament, should not be underestimated. She was never a revolutionary and was strongly opposed to economic sanctions.

But thanks to her and those leaders who in time joined her in Parliament, Colin Eglin and Van Zyl Slabbert, public opinion was ready to accept far-reaching change and a negotiated settlement. The Progressives lost out in the power battle - but won the battle of ideas, seeing their liberal democratic ideas enshrined in a model constitution.

Suzman's brave battles against John Vorster, opposing detention without trial and torture and her exposure of the spate of deaths at the hands of the security police, are now part of the historical record. There were also her regular visits to Robben Island and Pretoria Central jail to see Nelson Mandela, Robert Sobukwe and Braam Fischer, among others. She was the only MP who did so.

As Mandela has recalled, it was a wonderful sight for the prisoners to see this courageous woman. She is a great South African patriot.