Helen Suzman

The motion

That the Parliament pays tribute to the life of Helen Suzman and her long fight against apartheid and for liberal values in South Africa during her parliamentary career from 1953 to 1989 and beyond, particularly as the only parliamentarian in the South African Parliament publicly and actively opposed to apartheid from 1961 to 1971 as representative of the Progressive Party and later as a leading member of the Progressive Reform Party and the Progressive Federal Party; remembers Helen Suzman’s work for the South African Institute of Race Relations, her opposition to the 90-day detention law in 1963 and to the arbitrary powers of the South African justice minister and her long support for Nelson Mandela despite threats against her from the National government; remembers also her work as a member of the Independent Electoral Commission that oversaw the first democratic election in 1994 and as a member of the South African Human Rights Commission; recalls that she was declared an enemy of the state by President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe in 2001; notes that she was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and won the United Nations Human Rights award in 1978; mourns the death of this undaunted champion of freedom, but believes that her work will live on in the new South Africa and in the Helen Suzman Foundation, which bears her name and which continues to support liberal democratic ideas in that country.


No recorded vote on this motion. Most motions are never debated, and many that are debated are agreed without a division. Vote records are published from 2011.

Lab 17 SNP 11 LD 6 Green 1

Party shown is each supporter’s party when the motion was published.

No contribution in the Official Report cites S3M-03159 by reference.