It seems strange indeed that the Helen Suzman Foundation would be urged to cancel Imtiaz Sooliman, with whom she may well have disagreed. If Helen Suzman’s legacy is anything it is that conscientious engagement, clear and persuasive reasoning and rigorously marshalled evidence must be the hallmarks of our public life and our democracy.
In the two years that I was director of the Helen Suzman Foundation, I lost count of the number of times I heard people say categorically what Helen would have thought, said and done had she still been around.
They were, almost without exception, men.
A particular expression of omniscience, intended as searing rebuke, was the declaration that Helen would be turning in her grave. Turning in her grave apparently over the work we did on behalf of those Zimbabweans and their families who had long lived perfectly lawfully in South Africa, but faced the prospect of sudden and shattering forcible expulsion.
Turning in her grave because I called for content moderation in South Africa of Elon Musk’s X. Turning in her grave because the foundation dared express horror at the atrocities perpetrated by Israel in Gaza.
Turning in her grave, now most recently on a certain Lawrence Nowosenetz’s authority and under the watch of the foundation’s new director Naseema Fakir, that it has sought to invite Imtiaz Sooliman, the head of Gift of the Givers, to deliver the annual Helen Suzman memorial lecture on 14 November 2024.
For myself, I have never had the temerity to imagine that I might know definitively what Helen would have felt or thought. I didn’t ever really know her personally, other than as one of my mother’s beloved bridge friends. To the extent that I did, I was not especially enamoured. Invited to our wedding by my ex-husband, she is reported to have wished us well, adding “to the extent it lasts”. That she was proved right, in short order, did not endear her to me more.
Sole voice of opposition
But I admired and still admire her enormously. Few in this world must be able to fully comprehend what was required of her in serving that long 13-year stint as the sole voice of opposition in apartheid South Africa’s Parliament – how lonely, isolating, punishing, and yet absolutely essential that role was.
How can one not admire her calling for physical division of the House again and again on parliamentary votes to underscore the immorality of a system in which one lone figure sat amid rows of unoccupied seats staring down the opposite benches spilling over with yes-men. Humiliated by this spectacle, her opponents insisted on a new voting procedure.
How can one not admire her tough-minded, relentless questioning, her speeches and retorts, protected by parliamentary privilege, that allowed for critical disclosures of apartheid’s atrocities in a country that was otherwise choking on censorship.
How can one not admire that tireless insistence on seeing for herself in order to scrupulously record; visiting prisons, those banished and banned, observing political trials and forced removals.
In his open letter published by the Times of Israel, Nowosenetz is entirely unengaged by this record of Helen’s. Instead, he insists that she would be appalled by the choice of Sooliman on the basis that she was “a staunch and vocal supporter of Israel” and so presumably would brook no criticism of its treatment of Palestinians and recent conduct in Gaza.
She would, per Nowosenetz, share his view of South Africa’s application to the International Court of Justice as a “wrongful and libellous accusation of genocide”.
I don’t know that the evidence is so unambiguous. Certainly, Helen’s support for Israel was there, but it does not appear to have been uncritical. In 2005, she spoke of Israel’s policies inflicting “great hardships on Arabs”.
Some of her most notable acts of defiance of the apartheid regime were sourced in the recognition that systematic dehumanisation and debasement will ultimately ignite violent responses. She warned in Parliament that “long before the final chapter of the Struggle that is going on in our country is written, a great number of people, who were formerly peace-loving, will be driven to desperate acts of recklessness”.
‘A victim of the harsh apartheid system’
In 1991, after Winnie Mandela had been found guilty of kidnapping and being an accessory to the assault on four young boys, Helen offered to give evidence in mitigation of sentence: an offer “based on first-hand knowledge of what Winnie suffered over the years and what turned her into an embittered woman – a victim of the harsh apartheid system. I do not condone her actions or her utterances, but understand what she had to endure. To remain unaffected by her experiences would require the stuff of which saints are made.”
It’s worth noting that one of the key authors of South Africa’s International Court of Justice application, and the man who led the legal team, Professor John Dugard, was Helen’s long-term legal adviser and cherished friend.
John has written of Helen that from her “I learnt that there could be no compromise on human rights, but that it was essential to be correct on the law and accurate with the facts”.
He has explained that he put these lessons “to good effect in my work as UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). The Israelis and Americans complained bitterly about my reports on the violations of human rights in the OPT, declaring that they were biased and inaccurate. However, when challenged to provide evidence of any inaccuracy, I received no reply. I had done my homework in the best tradition of Helen Suzman.”
But of course, it is entirely possible that Helen, like so many Israelis and supporters of Israel around the world, would have been unable to look past the atrocities and horror inflicted by Hamas on 7 October 2023; that she would have been unable to apply the lessons she held up as the “bright star” in apartheid’s “dark chamber”; that she would have reversed the visceral disgust she felt for men like PW Botha and found the likes of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich more palatable.
It is possible that she, like many Israelis and supporters, would have been so consumed by grief and trauma at those events that she would have been unable to apprehend the pain and suffering of innocent Palestinians inflicted as a response.
We can never know. And that is why the legacy foundations of South Africa, peculiar creatures that they are, cannot and should not be attempts at resurrecting or substituting for the person whose legacy they are meant to honour.
They cannot be a kind of Ouija board. They can only try as best they can to uphold that legacy, defend the principles that were core to that person’s life and look to emulate their best example.
Among Helen’s very finest examples was her propensity to engage and debate those with whom she most vociferously disagreed — how else to explain that exhaustive tenure as the sole voice of opposition in apartheid’s Parliament?
And so it seems strange indeed that the Helen Suzman Foundation would be urged – ostensibly to honour her legacy no less – to rescind the invitation to and cancel Imtiaz Sooliman with whom she may well have disagreed.
Supposition and innuendo
Odder still is that this demand be made on the back of a letter whose contents show little but supposition and innuendo. If Helen’s legacy is anything it is that conscientious engagement, clear and persuasive reasoning and rigorously marshalled evidence must be the hallmarks of our public life and our democracy.
Except, of course, that it isn’t the foundation that is being so urged by Nowosenetz. It isn’t the foundation board that is being addressed. Rather it is the foundation’s new director, Naseema Fakir, who is publicly identified and goaded in the open letter published by the Times of Israel, replete with its not-so-veiled threats of funding repercussions.
No one can say definitively what Helen would have thought, felt, done in this situation today.
But her record of abhorrence for bigoted and chauvinistic bullies is well documented. DM
Nicole Fritz is a human rights lawyer and former director of the Helen Suzman Foundation.