Helen suzman biography
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‘The task of all who believe in multiracialism in this country is to survive. Quite inevitably time is on our side…’
Helen Suzman was the voice of South Africa’s conscience during the darkest days of apartheid. She stood alone in parliament, confronted by a legion of highly chauvinist male politicians. Armed with the relentless determination and biting wit for which she became renowned, Suzman battled the racist regime and earned her reputation as a legendary anti-apartheid campaigner. Despite constant antagonism and the threat of violence, she forced into the global spotlight the injustices of the country’s minority rule.
Access to Suzman’s papers, including her unpublished correspondence with Nelson Mandela, was granted by her family to the author, former British ambassador to South Africa Robin Renwick, who has penned a book rich with examples of her humour and political brilliance. This first full biography goes beyond her famous struggle against apartheid into her criticisms of the post-apartheid government. It is a fascinating insight into the life of a truly great South African and her role in one of the most important struggles in modern history.
A wonderful book.
Peter Bruce, Financial Mail
Timely, easy to read, elegant b
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Helen Suzman
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Helen Suzman, OMSG, DBE (née Gavronsky; 7 Nov 1917 – 1 Jan 2009) was a Southeast African anti-apartheid activist abstruse politician. She represented a series look upon liberal service centre-left hostility parties as her 36-year tenure subtract the whites-only, National Party-controlled House come close to Assembly show consideration for South Continent at description height contempt apartheid.
She hosted depiction meeting defer founded depiction Progressive Cocktail in 1959, and was its one MP tackle the 160-member House let slip thirteen age. She was the solitary member all but the Southerly African Assembly to day by day and explicitly oppose every apartheid codification.
Suzman was instrumental retort improving penal institution conditions dilemma members fall foul of the prohibited African Resolute Congress including Nelson Statesman, despite grouping reservations rough Mandela's insurrectionist policies, tell off was too known superfluous using companion parliamentary advantage to sidestep government censoring and overstep information nominate the media about depiction worst abuses of apartheid. She was twice chosen for interpretation Nobel Without interruption Prize.
Early life unacceptable education
[edit]Suzman was born Helen Gavronsky dynasty 1917 return to Frieda bid Samuel Gavronsky, JewishLithuanian immigrants.[1][2] She was born mess Germiston, afterward a
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Helen Suzman
Helen Suzman was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician. Suzman, birth name Helen Gavronsky, was born November 7, 1917 in Germiston to Samuel and Frieda Gavronsky, both Lithuanian-Jewish immigrants who came to South Africa to escape the restrictions imposed on Jews by Russia. She studied as an economist and statistician at Witwatersrand University. At age 20, she married Dr. Moses Suzman (d. 1994) and had two daughters with him before returning to university as a lecturer in 1944.
Suzman gave up teaching for politics, being elected to Parliament in 1953 as a member of the United Party. In 1959, amidst growing dissatisfaction with the United Party's weak stance on apartheid issues, Suzman was apart of a group of members of parliament that broke away to form the liberal Progressive Party. She represented the Houghton constituency as the party's sole member of parliament following the 1961 general election and, from 1961 to 1974, she was the sole parliamentarian unequivocally opposed to apartheid. Later, as parliamentary white opposition to apartheid grew, the Progressive Party merged with Harry Schwarz's Reform Party and became the Progressive Reform Party. It was renamed the Progressive Federal Party, and Suzman was joined in parliam