BOOK REVIEW: 3 Edition 5

For almost 40 years [Helen Suzman] gave them hell. For 13 of them she did so single-handedly, as the only "Prog" in the House. She became the bear-baiter extraordinaire. Yet she began as an improbable bruiser. The granddaughter of Lithuanian immigrants, she cheerfully confesses that even h...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Independent (London, England : 1986) England : 1986), 1993
Main Author: Hope, Christopher
Format: Review
Language:English
Subjects:
Bendo, Alexander
Blake, William
Bradbury, Malcolm
Chatterley, Clifford
Coupland, Douglas
Ferris, Paul
Friedlander, Albert H
Gibson, William Ford (1948- )
Hoffman, Eva
Huxley, Elspeth (1907-1997)
II, Charles
James, P D
Johnson, Francesca
Jowett, John
Kamin, Bert
Kincaid, Robert
Lamb, Jeremy
Malloy, Mack
Scott, Peter
Suzman, Helen
Taylor, Gary
Thomas, Caitlin
Thomas, Dylan
Thompson, E P
Turow, Scott
Waller, Robert James
Wilson, Ian
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Summary:For almost 40 years [Helen Suzman] gave them hell. For 13 of them she did so single-handedly, as the only "Prog" in the House. She became the bear-baiter extraordinaire. Yet she began as an improbable bruiser. The granddaughter of Lithuanian immigrants, she cheerfully confesses that even her father disapproved of her liberalism. And he was not alone. Most white voters applauded the government's frequent calls for Mrs Suzman to "go back to Ghana", or Russia, or Israel. Invitations to travel, being a customary form of abuse in South Africa, have nothing to do with broadening the mind. The Afrikaans press, she recalls, enjoyed depicting her as a Jewish harridan, "hideous and hooknosed", who had stepped straight out of the pages of Der Sturmer. In the cruel fairground of Parliament Helen Suzman relished taking on the hucksters and the mountebanks selling snake oil called "separate development" and "parallel freedoms" and other proprietary brands of nationalist hogwash. But it was the coconut shies she made her own. Against the massed gallery of government members opposite who stamped, shook their heads, foamed and threatened, Suzman took aim with deadly accuracy: political prisoners, detention without trial, sex across the colour bar, police shootings, torture and solitary confinement. She notched up an astonishing tally of direct hits; almost every one a coconut.
ISSN:0951-9467