Helen Suzman, ONE TOUGH WHITE LADY

Helen Suzman, one of South Africa's foremost anti-apartheid campaigners.

She was fearless, courageous – and Jewish.

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The former politician and daughter of Jewish East European immigrants was publicly critical of apartheid at a time when it was rare among whites. 

Mrs. Suzman was, for 36 years, South Africa's most famous white crusader against apartheid, waging an often lonely parliamentary battle. She was one of the few whites to earn any respect from black South Africans and regularly visited the jailed black nationalist leader, Nelson Mandela, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964.

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