page_title: Helen Suzman
section_title: Recognition and legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Helen Suzman / Recognition and legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Helen Suzman Boulevard, Cape Town (South Africa). Former name: Western Boulevard; renamed Helen Suzman Boulevard November 2011
context_page_description: Helen Suzman, DBE was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician. She represented a succession of liberal and centre-left opposition parties during her 36-year tenure in the whites-only, National Party-controlled House of Assembly of South Africa at the height of the apartheid era. She hosted the meeting that founded the Progressive Party in 1959, and was its only MP in the 160-member House for a period of 13 years. During that 13-year period she was the only Member of the South African Parliament consistently and unequivocally to oppose all apartheid legislation.
  Suzman was instrumental in improving prison conditions for members of the banned African National Congress including Nelson Mandela, despite her reservations about Mandela's revolutionary policies, and was also known for using her parliamentary privilege to evade government censorship and pass information to the media about the worst abuses of apartheid. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
context_section_description: While working from within the system, she earned the respect of Nelson Mandela, who praised her courage and credited her with helping to alleviate conditions of incarceration. Always outspoken and independent, she spoke out against the regime but at times opposed Mandela's policies. She opposed economic sanctions as counter productive and harmful to poor blacks. After Mandela's release "she was prominent among those ... who persuaded him to drop the ANC's revolutionary program in favour of an evolutionary one, retaining a market economy and a parliamentary democracy." She continued to be a critic after the fall of Apartheid. She was critical of Mandela when he praised dictator Muammar Qaddafi as a supporter of human rights. According to her biographer, Lord Robin Renwick, before and after the ANC came to power she continued to speak out against those in power who would "put party and state above the individual whether black or white".
  Mandela wrote a message to Suzman on her 85th Birthday, stating "Your courage, integrity and principled commitment to justice have marked you as one of the outstanding figures in the history of public life in South Africa. On your 85th birthday we can but pay tribute to you, thank you and let you know how fortunate our country feels for having had you as part of its public life and politics." Mandela added: "Now, looking back from the safety of our non-racial democracy, we can even feel some sympathy for the National Party members who shared Parliament with you. Knowing what a thorn in the flesh of even your friends and political allies you can be, your forthright fearlessness must have made life hell for them when confronted by you."
  Some in the ANC and SACP were critical of her method of opposition to Apartheid. She was denounced as an agent of colonialism and "part of the system" as well as for her failure to back sanctions. Mandela remained an admirer, saying "the consistency with which you defended the basic values of freedom and the rule of law over the last three decades has earned you the admiration of many South Africans." So did many others in the anti-apartheid movement, including Winnie Mandela.
  Suzman was awarded 27 honorary doctorates from universities around the world, including from Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Cambridge. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and received numerous other awards from religious and human rights organisations around the world. Former Queen of South Africa, Elizabeth II made her an honorary Dame Commander (Civil Division) of the Order of the British Empire in 1989.
  She was awarded the Order of Merit (Gold) by Nelson Mandela in 1997. She was voted No. 24 in the Top 100 Great South Africans TV series.
  She was awarded the Freedom of the City of Kingston upon Hull in 1987.
  The country of Liberia issued a postage stamp to honour Suzman in March 2011, calling her one of the Legendary heroes of Africa.
  In November 2017, the South African Post Office announced that it "has honoured this great, brave and pioneering woman with a rare gesture of a postage stamp" as an "indication of her importance to the country and to the liberation thereof and to that of women".
  The Progressive Federal Party of which Suzman was the sole Parliamentary representative between 1961 and 1973 became the Democratic Party after merging with the National Democratic Movement and the Independent Party in 1989. The Democratic Party was renamed the Democratic Alliance (DA) in 2000. The DA is currently the official opposition party of South Africa, under the interim leadership of John Steenhuisen. In November 2017, former DA leader Mmusi Maimane paid tribute to Suzman, noting that "Every value we call our own in the DA can be traced back to the principles Helen fought for over her 36-year-long career as a Member of Parliament".
  The Helen Suzman Foundation was founded in 1993 to honour the life work of Helen Suzman. The Foundation seeks to promote the values espoused by Helen Suzman throughout her public life and in her devotion to public service.
caption: Western Boulevard in Cape Town was renamed Helen Suzman Boulevard in 2011.
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