ANTI-APARTHEID POLITICAL LEADER HELEN SUZMAN DIES

UNCLAS PRETORIA 000003


E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: KJUS PGOV KDEM SF
SUBJECT: ANTI-APARTHEID POLITICAL LEADER HELEN SUZMAN DIES


1. (U) Helen Suzman, the internationally renowned
anti-apartheid political leader who befriended the imprisoned
Nelson Mandela in the 1960s, died in Johannesburg on January

1. She was 91 and her death followed a brief illness.
Suzman, who assumed a seat in Parliament in 1953, for decades
was among the most venerated of white campaigners urging an
end to racial rule. As the liberal Progressive Party's lone
representative in the all-white Parliament for a time until
the mid-1970s, a period when many of apartheid's most
repressive features were being devised, she used her
parliamentary immunity to speak out when other avenues of
protest were suppressed. She confronted members of the
ruling National Party on nearly every piece of legislation it
sought to implement, and once told Prime Minister P. W.
Botha, "I am not afraid of you -- I never have been, I never
will be. I think nothing of you." When a government
minister once accused her of embarrassing South Africa with
her parliamentary questions, she replied, "It is not my
questions that embarrass South Africa; it is your answers."
She left Parliament in 1989 and established the Helen Suzman
Foundation.


2. (U) During the 1980s before she left Parliament, Suzman
differed sharply with more radical campaigners inside and
outside South Africa who were supportive of economic
sanctions to press the country's white rulers toward reform,
saying sanctions would hurt poor blacks more than whites. To
Suzman's frustration, this led some of her critics to say she
was unwittingly helping to prolong apartheid. This would be
a variation on a critique she had long endured, and to some
extent accepted -- that by engaging in what was largely a
charade of parliamentary politics in apartheid South Africa,
she became complicit, however unwittingly, in the larger
deceits of apartheid. This critique would make it difficult
for members of the African National Congress (ANC),who
emerged in power after the 1994 election, to embrace her
despite her work against white minority rule.


3. (U) Tributes for Suzman's life dominated the news on
January 2. The Nelson Mandela Foundation noted, "Our country
has lost a great patriot and a fearless leader against
apartheid." Mandela recounted, "It was an odd and wonderful
sight to see this courageous woman peering into our cells (on
Robben Island) and strolling around our courtyard. She was
the first and only woman ever to grace our cells."
Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille said, "Helen Suzman's
clarity of vision, her courage and her firmness of purpose
stand as beacons to those of us who seek to take that process
further." ANC President Jacob Zuma said, "Helen Suzman made
an important contribution towards exposing the evils of
apartheid. Her concern for the plight of political prisoners
was appreciated in the country and worldwide and her
contribution to the debate on the creation of a
constitutional democracy was valuable." Former President
Thabo Mbeki noted, "She was an exceptional South African who
stood up and really maintained a principled stance against
apartheid." Congress of the People leader Mosiuoa Lekota
said, "No doubt, those of us who spent years of imprisonment
on Robben Island will always remember with gratitude Helen's
visits to the Island to inspect the conditions under which we
were kept. 'Long live the spirit of Helen Suzman.'"


BOST