“On the side of the angels”: Helen Suzman and the 1966 Robert Kennedy tour
1966 was a bleak year in South African politics. The National Party Government celebrated the fifth anniversary of the white republic and won its biggest ever majority in the all-white elections in March. The ANC, the SACP, the PAC and their allies were all banned and their leadership was either in exile or in jail. In the Eastern Cape, Verwoerd's theories of grand apartheid were being test-driven in the nominally autonomous Transkei Bantustan.
North of the Limpopo, Ian Smith had recently proclaimed UDI for 'Rhodesia' and growled defiance at the world. The Salazar dictatorship in Portugal was still reasonably strong and still ruling Angola and Mozambique. There was apparent substance in the rhetoric of a great white 'anti-communist' redoubt in Southern Africa anchored by a powerful white South Africa.
The lone voice of reason in the all-white South African Parliament ('Coloureds' were still represented by one or two white MPs, members of the compromised United Party), was Helen Suzman, in her fifth year as the only representative of the Progressive Party. The official opposition United Party was deeply compromised and indecisive.
The only other vocal criticism of the government came from the English language university campuses and was articulated by NUSAS, the National Union of South African Students. They were beginning to echo the international student protest themes of the 1960s: anti-war, anti-racial injustice and anti-capitalism; on this latter point, Suzman and the students parted ways over the years.
In 1966 NUSAS invited US Senator Robert F. Kennedy, brother of the assassinated President John F. Kennedy to South Africa to deliver its annual 'Day of Affirmation' Address at the University of Cape Town. Kennedy was being seen as the new liberal standard bearer of American politics and was seeking to gain support among the African American community. His acceptance of the NUSAS invitation to visit South Africa in June 1966 can be seen as a combination of an idealistic desire to confront a racist regime at the bottom of Africa and a realistic desire to strengthen his support among black voters back home.