SPEECH BY TONY LEON, MP, FORMER LEADER OF THE DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE, CONDOLENCE MOTION ON THE LATE HELEN SUZMAN, NATIONAL ASSEMBLEY, CAPE TOWN, JANUARY 27 2009
On New Year's Day 2009, South Africa and the world mourned the death of Helen Suzman. Yet today, in Parliament, we should celebrate the long-lived life and public service of undoubtedly one of the most distinguished parliamentarians of the past century.
Helen Suzman embodied and fought for the essential principles of the South African Constitution. Her tireless efforts on behalf of the disenfranchised, the disadvantaged and the downtrodden shone a bright and noble light in the darkness of the Apartheid Parliament.
She has bequeathed us a mighty legacy of achievement; a potent example of holding power to account; and proof that the power of conviction can, over time, defeat the convictions of power. This exceptional, intensely human and very humorous woman was a unique politician. We should look upon her and learn from her. We will not see her like again.
Her 36 years as the Member of Parliament for Houghton, which for 13 years in pre-democratic South Africa was the only white parliamentary constituency to return a liberal member, were unrivalled in their energy and courage, singular in their commitment to principle and the cause of pugnacious opposition. Alone in the House of Assembly - although protected by a surprisingly supportive Speaker and aided by an affirming media - she confronted the juggernaut of the apartheid state. She did not stop its enactments or excesses, but she exposed its perversities and prejudices.
She kept alive the democratic values which that system so assiduously undermined.
Her dissent was never mechanical or knee-jerk: her iron-clad belief in simple justice and the Rule of Law impelled her opposition and provided her moral compass. As she so often observed, ‘'If you don't know what to do, go and look for the principle.' She practised what she preached. Clad in the armour of principle, armed with a plethora of facts and buttressed by her first-hand visits to the furthest reaches of South Africa 's dark empire of racial discrimination, she set the benchmark for conscientious public and parliamentary service.
For all its democratic defects, the parliament she served in offered her, as a single member in a hostile chamber, almost unlimited opportunity to perform the role of doughty fighter, despite the fact that she never belonged to the party in power. She proved by her example something we are apt to forget: government holds no monopoly of wisdom and enjoys no exclusive franchise on patriotism. Often the reverse is true, and the cruel light of hindsight indicates that frequently, during Helen Suzman's time and afterward, South Africa and its national interest is sometimes better served from the opposition benches, than from anywhere else.
Although she retired from Parliament in 1989, just before the dawn of the new South Africa , she remained actively and vociferously engaged in the politics and public affairs of this country; first as a human rights' commissioner, and later as a commentator and, yes, even at the age of 90, as an agitator. In the words of one of her election slogans, ‘'she fought to put things right''. Refreshingly, she had no time for the modern fashion of political correctness or other pretentious, and self-defeating, attempts to cut corners on principle and to adjust views, or bend history itself, to fit current needs or court majority opinion.
On a more personal level, Helen was the inspiration for my own first political involvement over 40 years ago. She enthused an entire generation of then young South Africans that the progressive cause was worth fighting for, and that the system of apartheid was worth fighting against. Then 20 years ago, in 1989, I had the daunting task of succeeding her as the Member of Parliament for Houghton. I realised that I was standing on the shoulders of a political giant: her legacy, even while alive was writ large, and stood in inverse proportion to her physical stature.
There is little doubt or debate that Helen Suzman has now ascended into the pantheon of liberal greats. But it is perhaps worth noting in fixing her legacy and honouring her contribution that she was no ideologue. She summed up her philosophy with the simple premise: ‘'I hate bullies." Although a liberal tout court, some of her stances on social issues were radical, and she was in other respects conservative: she believed, for example, in conserving institutions - from a Parliament populated with serious-minded and honest members to courts of law presided over by sober and independent jurists.
While she celebrated the fact that she lived long enough to see the system which she so vigorously opposed collapse and witness the birth of the new constitutional order, she maintained a steadfast and unsentimental eye on current developments and remained utterly unafraid to confront the current government when warranted.
This led to a clash, in 2004, with Thabo Mbeki, then President. He accused her of being "in favour of change, but determined to resist it''. On this matter, Mr Mbeki was almost entirely wrong. For what Suzman opposed was not change itself, but the knock-it-all-down-and-begin-everything-anew approach, accompanied by lashings of exclusionary racial nationalism which often passes for transformation in South Africa To her dying day, she was splendidly unimpressed by rank and uninterested in the trappings of political or state power.
Helen Suzman's funeral on 4 January 2009 at the Jewish Cemetery at Westpark, Johannesburg, brought together the current political good and the great, and the decidedly not so great, of the governing elite, the opposition and civil society. Someone wistfully remarked at the event, ‘'it's as though the country is searching for a true heroine.'' At her gravesite they did not have to look any further.
Issued by the Democratic Alliance, January 27 2009
