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Viewing cable 09PRETORIA3, ANTI-APARTHEID POLITICAL LEADER HELEN SUZMAN DIES

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Reference ID Created Released Classification Origin
09PRETORIA3 2009-01-02 09:23 2011-08-24 01:00 UNCLASSIFIED Embassy Pretoria
R 020923Z JAN 09
FM AMEMBASSY PRETORIA
TO SECSTATE WASHDC 6849
INFO AFRICAN UNION COLLECTIVE
AMCONSUL CAPE TOWN 
AMCONSUL DURBAN 
AMCONSUL JOHANNESBURG 
DIA WASHINGTON DC
CIA WASHINGTON DC
NSC WASHDC
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