Anti-apartheid campaigner Suzman (91) dies

Helen Suzman, one of South Africa's most celebrated anti-apartheid campaigners, has died at the age of 91.

Helen Suzman, one of South Africa's most celebrated anti-apartheid campaigners, has died at the age of 91.

Here are five facts on Suzman, who was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

A frail-looking champion of non-white rights, she was the longest serving member of the country's white parliament and a ceaseless campaigner for the enfranchisement of the black majority. She retired in May 1989.

Elected in the white Johannesburg suburb of Houghton in 1953, she was the only liberal opposition assembly member for 13 years from 1961, a period she has called her time of trial. She spoke out for non-whites against the parliamentary juggernaut of the ruling National Party as it institutionalised apartheid.

READ MORE

Her arch foe President P.W. Botha dubbed her "Mother Superior" in sarcastic reference to her scolding attacks on the Nationalists. She once said of Botha: "If he was female he would arrive in parliament on a broomstick."

One of the few whites to earn any respect from black South Africans, she regularly visited nationalist leader Nelson Mandela during his 27 years in jail. In his Long Walk to Freedom autobiography, Mandela described Suzman as "one of the few members of parliament who cared about political prisoners".

She was born Helen Gavronsky to Lithuanian immigrant parents in Germiston near Johannesburg on November 7th 1917, and married physician Moses Suzman in 1937. They had two daughters.

Reuters