(Author: Colin Eglin, Vol 64, #3, Chanukah 2009)
Helen and I first met in June 1954, over lunch in the Oak Room of the Manchester Hotel that once stood at the corner of Strand and Burg Streets, Cape Town. I was about to become a member of the Cape Provincial Council. Helen was completing her second year as MP for Houghton.
The meeting had been arranged by Cape Times parliamentary correspondent Tony Delius, who had phoned me and said, “Colin, there is one MP among the new members I believe you should meet – she is Helen Suzman. She is bright. And, one way or another, she is going to make an impact on the political scene.”
How accurate both Tony’s assessment and prediction turned out to be! For Helen was bright very bright. And over the years, she certainly made her impact on the political scene.
I found Helen to be very attractive: physically, politically and intellectually. I realized that behind her sparkling blue eyes, there was a sharp mind and a very tough will. We seemed to be on the same political wavelength, and to share the same judgment of the main political players at that time. That lunch marked the start of a personal friendship and a mutually supportive political relationship that lasted for the next fifty years.
Over those years, I came to appreciate her keen intellect, to understand her commitment to principle, her intolerance of hypocrisy, her scorn for position seekers, her anger at injustice, her concern for people. I also came to realize that she did not suffer fools gladly.
I enjoyed her sense of fun. She was a great mimic – at her best when mimicking John Vorster, or the warder at Roeland Street prison barking at the shivering woman prisoners at an early morning parade.
I appreciated her warm and generous hospitality. Helen loved her home, with it its garden and her dogs. Her home was the focal point of her domestic, social and a large part of her political life. It was in her home that she entertained friends or house guests, gave interviews to the media or had discussions with people who had come from afar to meet here. It was here that she issued statements or worked the telephone lines, and attended to the many people who knocked on her door to seek her assistance in their suffering under the discriminatory laws and regulations of the apartheid government.
A few word pictures from the past will reflect on various aspects of Helen’s personality.
Helen gets impatient:
In July 1958, after a stormy congress of the United Party at which the party had gone back on its undertaking to make a significant amount of land available for ‘native settlement’, nine of us, including Helen, met to consider our course of action. After some debate, we decided we would issue a statement condemning the decision of the congress, realizing that this would lead to our expulsion or resignation from the party.
We had taken some time considering the draft of the statement when we heard of another person who wanted to join us. This meant further discussion and drafting. Helen, who had been showing signs of impatience and wanted to leave for Johannesburg, said, “We know what we have to do. I’ll trust you to get it right. I am leaving now. I’ll sign at the bottom of a blank sheet of paper.” This she did, and off she went.
Helen the team player:
When, in the 1960s, Helen was on her own in parliament and I was the only member of the old Progressive Party caucus still active in politics and living in Cape Town, Helen would phone me, usually at about seven in the morning, to consult with me on new policy issues that had arisen. She outlined the issue and gave me her personal position on it, but I sensed that she was not sure that this would find favor with the party.
At times, I said that I felt that her policy position was fine; at others we modified her position statement to some extent. After a couple of years of this procedure, I suggested to Helen that in future she, taking all the factors into account, should do just what she thought was right, adding that should there be any problems with the party, I would back her. This worked without a hitch, for in spite of her unique position and her strong personality, Helen was a great team player.
Helen on the ball:
When I came back to parliament and shared a front bench with Helen, I realized that she had learnt some useful skills during the thirteen years that she was on her own. One of these was to be able to study a document and draft a question or prepare a speech while a debate was droning on and yet at the same time keep an ear tuned to the proceedings.
On one occasion P W Botha, in the course of a speech in Afrikaans, referred to Helen as a tannie. Quick as a flash, Helen raised her head and responded, “Don’t you tannie me, or I’ll oomie you.” Helen triumphs at last: On 19 June 1986, the National Assembly finally passed a Bill scrapping the Pass Laws that Helen had fought against year after year since she first came to parliament in 1953. After the Speaker had announced the result, our caucus members crowded around her to congratulate her. A moment later, two young National Party members left their benches and walked across the carpeted floor to shake Helen’s hand and thank her for what she had done. Helen the fighter had won at last.
Helen becomes speechless:
On 7 November 1987, Helen and I were in Shanghai on a visit to China as the guests of the Chinese Association for International Understanding. After breakfast, the host accompanying us told me that he had seen in Madame Suzman’s CV that that day was her seventieth birthday. They had decided to have a birthday dinner for her, at which a special guest would be present. He asked me not to tell Madame as they wanted this to be a surprise.
That evening, to Helen’s astonishment, there was a festive looking round table at which we were seated, together with a number of high ranking guests. The real surprise was to come when a man dressed in a Mau-type suit and wearing a clerical collar arrived to take the last unoccupied seat. He turned out to be the Communist Catholic Church Bishop of Shanghai! Our host, having seen in Helen’s CV that she had gone to Parktown Convent Catholic Girls School, had decided to give her a surprise by having the Bishop of Shanghai present to bless her special birthday occasion.
It certainly was a surprise for this Jewish girl from Germiston!
Helen keeps on at it:
After Helen had retired from parliament, she continued to speak out on or take up issues that she believed were unjust or wrong. In spite of the deep bond of respect and affection that there was between Nelson Mandela and herself, she criticized him quite sharply when at times she thought that, as President, he had acted incorrectly.
I can recall a day in 1997 when a number of us gathered at the Presidential residence in Pretoria to witness President Mandela awarding the Order of Merit (Gold) to Walter Sisulu, Beyers Naude, Dick van der Ross and Helen Suzman.
President Mandela, in his warm genial way, said:
I am honored to bestow this significant award on these four distinguished citizens of our country. In deciding on three of them I have followed my head. In the case of the other person I followed my heart. I shan’t tell you who that other person is – but she gives me a lot of trouble!
Helen Suzman was a hands-on politician and a tenacious fighter who never gave up. She was a liberal. But she was no political ideologue. To her people, not dogma, came first.
She had a straightforward political creed: “I hate bullies. I stand for simple justice, equal opportunity and human rights. These are the indispensable elements in a democratic society and are well worth fighting for.”
She confronted the government bullies head on. She fought relentlessly for simple justice, equal opportunity and human rights.
Helen was a great parliamentarian, but one of a special kind. Unlike so many MPs, she did not allow parliament determine her agenda. Nor did she allow the ritual nature or ambiance of parliament to dilute her message.
In fact, she was more than a parliamentarian. She was a political activist who, with consummate courage, tenacity and skill, used parliament as a platform to get her message across. In the dark days of apartheid, she was a beacon of light.
But what does the memory of Helen mean for us today? What is her legacy?
I believe that for public representatives and for people in public service, Helen’s legacy is the standard of excellence she set; a standard anchored on integrity and reinforced with courage, commitment and compassion. For all of us as citizens, her legacy is that she showed that “one person can make a difference”.
On occasions when we are considering our own actions, let us keep before us the fact that Helen’s greatness was founded not on any grand design, great speech or momentous event, but on a multitude of single acts of courage and caring.
The words spoken by Senator Robert Kennedy in his address to the young people of South Africa at the University of Cape Town on 6 June 1966 are very appropriate as we remember Helen today:
Few of us will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each one of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.
Each time a man stands for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. And crossing each other from a million centres of energy and daring, those ripples can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
As we remember Helen, we thank her for sending forth those ripples of hope.
Helen is no longer with us, but her legacy lives on as an inspiration to us and to generations yet to come.
Colin Eglin is a veteran Parliamentarian and liberal anti-apartheid campaigner who served as Leader of the Opposition (Progressive Federal Party) in the House of Assembly from 1977-9. This article has been adapted from his address at the Helen Suzman Memorial, held at the Green and Sea Point Hebrew Congregation on 8 February 2009.
