South Africa lost one of its most treasured citizens when Dame Helen Suzman, the iconic advocate of liberalism and human rights, died peacefully on the 1st of January 2009. For those of us who knew her well it was not a happy start to the New Year. Knowing her as we did though, she probably didn’t want to drag herself into yet another year of disintegrating health. Her mind was alive and kicking but her body was crumbling. We spent her 91st birthday as fellow Scorpios eating a delicately shaped samoosa together.

Nelson Mandela had just visited her the day before, adorning her internationally trampled drawing room with magnificent flowers. The walls told the story of great accolades received from various esteemed quarters throughout her many years as SA’s most outstanding human rights fighter and Member of Parliament.
Helen Suzman’s contribution to the struggle for democracy and the consequent demise of apartheid was perhaps more significant than many people today realise. Sole attribution to the ANC’s armed struggle in the liberation movement often undermines the role of protest pressures from within.

As a lone voice in a formidable patriarchal parliament, Helen Suzman used her extensive political rigour and ready wit to expose the iniquities of apartheid to the world. For this she became world renowned, twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, receiving numerous honorary doctorates, and the DBE from the Queen of England in 1989.

Our friendship started through my husband who became a colleague of hers when he joined the PFP in 1985. She took him under her wing and mentored him as a young newcomer in the House of Delegates of the much-criticised Tricameral parliament. It seemed that she had handpicked him over others, as she appeared not to have extended this generosity to all and sundry. Our friendship soon developed through the years and I recall that fairly early in the relationship my husband, Mamoo Rajab arrived with a gold bangle belonging to Helen, which a certain Indian jeweller had made for her. My husband wished to copy the pattern for me and she was generous in sharing her jewellery with no reservation. For many years we sported the same bangles and her only comment was that he was too miserly, as he had only made me 8 bangles while she had a bulky dozen. Our relationship grew over the years and as we became firm family friends we would spend time staying over at each other’s homes, experiencing the joys of ’hearth and mirth’. I would often marvel at the fact that in her repertoire of famous people who clogged her life with accolades and admiration, how did she make space for the ordinary people. But this was precisely the nature of her character, if she liked you she would not be deterred by fame and fortune. Her only abiding uncontrollable nature lay in her belief in fairness. She did not ever waver on this score. In the dark days of apartheid Albert Lutuli, the noble peace prize-winner described her as the “only bright star in a dark chamber”.

Her integrity in fighting for her principles for liberal democracy was legendary. Helen’s legacy of tackling issues in an informed manner became the hallmark of liberal opposition politics in South Africa. Already in 1969, she spoke of apartheid as structural violence that disrupted black lives in a most personal way.
She was an ardent fighter against the laws, which directly affected our lives – the Group Areas Act, the Mixed Marriages and Immorality Acts. She abhorred the Race Classification Act of 1950 that determined the status of everyone born in SA, where they went to school, where they worked, whom they could marry and sleep with, which public amenities they could use, and where they could or could not live.

She did not bend to authority that was illegitimate. Accordingly on issues of justice, no Prime Minister, no Minister, no government official escaped her barbs. Those who took her on did so at their peril. She deflected their abuse and insults with a sardonic wit that made headlines the world over. Having served under five formidable presidents – DF Malan, JG Strydom, HF Verwoerd, BJ Vorster and PW Botha - from 1953 to 1989, Helen showed tremendous courage in single-handedly taking on the plight of the oppressed.  Her battles for a just society were never done sanctimoniously. She gave as good as she got. Often as the only woman in Parliament she took on men who probably had the most daunting visages of any politicians in the world. “It is not my questions that are an embarrassment, it is your answers”, was one of her world famous retaliatory comments when a Minister blamed her for the world’s negative perception of SA.
Helen Suzman was a politician of a special type. She was elected as a member of the United Party in 1953, which she left soon afterwards with colleagues to form the Progressive Party, later known as the Progressive Federal Party.  Rhoda Kadali, a close friend and human rights activist notes that Helen was always “armed with devastatingly accurate information gleaned from her insistence on seeing things for herself, she became a “boots-on politician”, going where the action was.” From prisons to squatter camps she traversed the country in search of the truth as its archangel and protector of justice. This role was a self imposed one driven by passion and a mission to defend what was always right. She became the mouthpiece of the voiceless masses. When she made submissions to the Fagan Commission in 1947, hoping to influence the Smuts government to reverse a battery of laws that reduced black men, women and their families to mere chattels, she was clearly driven to speak up for the oppressed. She fought those pernicious laws to the end of her career in 1989 with the ferocity of a tiger, holding up a mirror to a world that might have remained ignorant because of prevailing media censorship.

For her, principles mattered more than personalities. I was in the audience a few years ago when she addressed a group of invited guests in Cape Town’s Jewish Museum on the occasion of the official opening of the Helen Suzman-fighter for human rights exhibition. She took us down memory lane of a richly endowed political career of opposition politics extending over a period of five prime ministers. She recalls that Vorster once paid her a compliment by saying that she was worth ten United Party MP’s which she thought was an understatement. He also told her that she had “allowed herself to be used too much”, implying that she was one of Lenin’s “useful idiots”. On one occasion during her regular spats with her hated opponent P.W.Botha he called her a “vicious little cat”. To which she retorted: “If you were female you would arrive in parliament on a broomstick” Her skill lay in her sharp wit, her stamina and her doggedly determined nature.

None of this spunk left her character in her final years of her life. She openly chastised our current government for some of its present excesses. While she acknowledged that SA was undoubtedly a better country than it was during Nat rule she felt that we still needed a strong opposition to prevent a return to a one party state. Her chief gripes were against the ANC government for its failure to deliver a comprehensive anti aids programme, its attack on the judiciary for a racial mindset and its uncritical support for Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

In an excerpt of her speech delivered at the University of Cape Town on receiving the penultimate of one of 26 other honorary doctorates she said: “I am proud to acknowledge that I am a liberal who adheres to old fashion liberal values such as the rule of law, universal franchise, free elections, a free press, free association, guaranteed civil rights and an independent judiciary” These words were boldly featured at the entrance to the exhibition with a grand picture of a young Helen who had she not taken up politics may have made it on the cat walks for her physical attributes of great beauty.

Beauty brains, guts and heart were certainly what made the chemistry of one of SA’s most amazing personalities.

Dr.Devi Rajab is a leading South African journalist and can be reached at: rajab@cybertek.co.za