The world is mourning the passing of Nelson Mandela, the iconic leader who emerged from 27 years in a South African prison to work with his former opponents to peacefully transition his country from the despised racism of apartheid into a real democracy. When he became South Africa’s first black—and democratically elected—president in the nation’s history, instead of taking revenge on his former tormentors and persecutors, he established a Reconciliation Commissions to empower South Africans of all political beliefs to resume normal lives at the earliest possible date. He even supported South Africa’s rugby team, which had previously been a symbol of the racist apartheid system of rigid segregation of the races.

Mandela’s exemplary life came to an end Dec. 5 when he died peacefully at age 95, leaving a legacy of courage, and a willingness to sacrifice everything for his principles. In his decades-long struggle to end apartheid and liberate his people in South Africa, Mandela and his cause received substantial support from South African’s thriving Jewish community, which at its peak numbered 120,000, mostly prosperous citizens. 

Among these was Helen Gavronsky Suzman, who has been described as a leading anti-apartheid member of the South African Parliament for many years.  Along with colleagues on a special visit to South Africa in May of 1976, I had a chance to conduct a face-to-face interview with Suzman at the South African Parliament building in Cape Town.  

At the time, she was often compared to U.S. Rep. Bella Abzug and Israeli Knesset Member Shulamit Aloni, both outspoken Jewish members of national legislatures who were passionate fighters for human rights. “Like Abzug and Aloni, Mrs. Suzman is an outspoken Jewish lawmaker, whose sharp tongue often exasperates her opponents, but whose moral courage and relentless quest for reform of South Africa’s rigid racial segregation system known as apartheid has won her admiration even among those who believe she wants to move too far, too fast,” I wrote in the June 9, 1976 edition of the Jewish Light.

Suzman, who was “stylishly dressed in a gray business suit which matches the color of her hair,” spent much of the interview outlining the views of her Progressive Reform Party on South Africa’s future.

‘We might have to sacrifice an entire generation to set South Africa’s racial policies right,” she told us. The then-59-year-old represented the Johannesburg District in the 166-member House of Assembly. She added that from 1910 to 1948 South Africa’s government was led by its British-descended population, which favored a gradual racial reform program. But the moderate British-oriented United Party was replaced by the conservative National Party, made up mostly of descendants of the Bores (Dutch), French and German settlers that favored apartheid. My Jewish delegation was shocked to see separate drinking fountains for “white,” “colored” and “Indian” at the modern Jan Smuts International Airport—signs which used to be omnipresent in the Jim Crow American South in the 1940s and ‘50s.

Helen Gavronsky Suzman was the only woman member of South Africa’s parliament at the time and one of five Jewish members, all of whom were opposed to apartheid. At the time, John Vorster, a member of the pro-apartheid National Party, was prime minister. The population of South Africa then was 24 million, of which about 4.2 million was white. About 60 percent were Afrikaaner-speaking and 40 percent English-speaking. Over 17.5 million were black and the rest were of mixed racial background.  Most of South Africa’s 120,000 Jews were British speaking, like Suzman, and generally liberal on the subject of race.

Suzman outlined her and her party’s views on what needed to be done to reform South Africa’s racist policies. This included: repeal of the Population Registration Act, which required all persons to carry identity cards as to racial classification. Suzman called this “the cornerstone of apartheid.” One of the first openly defiant acts performed by Mandela at a rights rally was to burn his identity card, an act that greatly contributed to his life sentence in prison for treason. 

Suzman also favored elimination of the Group Areas Act, which prevented blacks from living outside specifically designated areas. She was also supportive of a gradual program of phasing in compulsory university education for black and “colored” populations, and removal of all laws restricting black membership in trade unions.

Suzman died in January 2009 at the age of 91. Thankfully, she did get to see Mandela emerge from prison to become a just and human leader of a nation that had deprived him of his basic human rights but never of his dignity.

‘Cohnipedia’ is the online feature by Editor-in-Chief Emeritus  Robert A. Cohn, chronicling St. Louis’ Jewish history. Visit Cohnipedia online at www.stljewishlight.com/cohn