Helen Suzman, OMSG, DBE (née Gavronsky; 7 November 1917 – 1 January 2009) was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician.

She represented a series 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 apartheid.

[7][8] After the 1961 election, Prime Minister Hendrik F. Verwoerd announced in Parliament that he had never believed the Progressive Party would be a threat and, turning towards Suzman, said "I have written you off".

Most of her questions concerned treatment of Black, Coloured and Indian people – on issues such as housing, education, forced removals, Pass Law offences, detentions, bannings, whippings, police brutality and execution.

[3] Mandela later wrote: "She was undoubtedly the only real anti-apartheid voice in parliament and the discourtesy of the Nat MPs towards her showed how they felt her punches and how deeply they resented her presence.

Often, as apartheid legislation was introduced, she would call a division of the house, a process whereby the members of the Parliament had physically to stand up and be counted.

In her 13 years as the sole member of her party in the South African Parliament, Suzman made 885 speeches on almost every conceivable subject and posed 2,262 questions.

In a period in which there were numerous laws passed imposing censorship on the press, parliamentary privilege ensured that her exchanges in Parliament could be published.

[14][9] Marie van Zyl, of the Kappie Kommando (An ultra-conservative Afrikaner women's political organization)[further explanation needed], wrote to Suzman protesting the latter's support for "heathens" and boasting that her own people, the Voortrekkers, had brought the Bible over the mountains to the interior to the blacks.

They wrote it, my dear …”[15] In February 1974, LJC Botha, Nationalist MP for Rustenburg remarked: ‘When she gets up in this House, she reminds me of a cricket in a thorn tree when it is very dry in the bushveld.

In her fight for the Bantu, the honourable member... sings the same tune for year after year.’[3] She famously advised John Vorster, Prime Minister from 1966 to 1978, to some day visit a township, "in heavy disguise as a human being".

[16] Later, as parliamentary white opposition to apartheid grew, the Progressive Party gained a further 6 seats (in 1974) and Suzman was joined in parliament by notable liberal colleagues such as Colin Eglin.

Suzman herself said: "Every Nationalist MP should go to at least one funeral for unrest victims heavily disguised as human beings, instead of sitting on their green benches in parliament, insulated like fish in an aquarium.

[18] In 1986, there was the following exchange in Parliament when Minister of Law and Order Le Grange asked "Who is the hon Member for Houghton's No 1 man in South Africa?

In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela wrote: “It was an odd and wonderful sight to see this courageous woman peering into our cells and strolling around our courtyard.

This was certainly no mere coincidence..."[22] Andrew Mlangeni, a senior ANC member who was on Robben Island with Mandela, described how "[w]henever our treatment in prison tended to improve a little bit, we knew that Suzman was on her way.

Perhaps he will enjoy it.”[24] She visited banned persons, such as Albert Luthuli, Winnie Mandela and Mamphela Ramphele, and made effective representations on their behalf.

[5] In 1963, Albert Luthuli, then President of the ANC, wrote to Helen Suzman and expressed his "deep appreciation and admiration for your heroic and lone stand against a most reactionary Parliament...I most heartily congratulate you for your untiring efforts in a situation that would frustrate and benumb many... For ever remember, you are a bright Star in a dark Chamber...Not only ourselves – your contemporaries, but also posterity, will hold you in high esteem".

[25] She visited Bram Fischer and other ANC and Communist Party political prisoners and personally provided them with speakers and records, seeking improvements to their conditions with ministers and in Parliament.

[26] She visited Fischer several times in hospital, calling repeatedly for his release and remarking in the press that with so many millions spent on security she did not understand why the government was so afraid of one incapacitated, bedridden old man.

[28] She used these visits to arm herself with evidence from on the spot investigations "to challenge forcefully the government and bear personal witness to the suffering inflicted on millions of South Africans".

She supported the decriminalisation of marijuana use long before it was fashionable, stating publicly that possession of marijuana/cannabis (or dagga, as it is known in South Africa) for personal use should not be a criminal offence.

Instead of investing in projects to give people jobs, they spend millions buying weapons and private jets, and sending gifts to Haiti."

[8] 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.

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.

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.

Former Queen of South Africa, Elizabeth II made her an honorary Dame Commander (Civil Division) of the Order of the British Empire in 1989.

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".

[42] Achmat Dangor, the Nelson Mandela Foundation chief executive, said Suzman was a "great patriot and a fearless fighter against apartheid".