A Life Well Lived

Living life to the fullest provides a visceral satisfaction to anyone who listens to their inner conscience and responds by reacting to their social environment in a way that can lead them to respect themselves. Few of us are capable of shedding the cloak of anonymity in a cause that will invariably bring criticism and complaint. It's a measure of altruism to set aside the comforts of wealth and entitlement to embark on a journey of social justice, most particularly within a society constructed upon social injustice.

Helen Suzman of South Africa was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. That, in itself, is an astonishing measure of her value to her society and to the world at large. She received no fewer than twenty-five honourary degrees, along with an honourary Order of the British Empire. These bestowals of admiration and acknowledgement are not given lightly, without due regard and process. This woman distinguished herself by her relentless pursuit of justice on behalf of her society's disadvantaged.

For thirteen years, during which she rendered her unstinting devotion to the betterment of her society, she represented a privileged, wealthy constituency in Johannesburg, South Africa. She was instrumental in launching a breakaway political party committed to non-racialism during the modern height of political and social apartheid in South Africa, with ever more repressive legislation being imposed against majority South African blacks.

She launched her own, outspoken, energetic and highly visible campaign against institutional abuse of blacks, against police torture, prison abuse, and the overall misery and cruelty of social apartheid. Government sanctioned and legislated racist discrimination. She became adept at using any parliamentary procedure through which she could leverage a potential of changing attitudes and legislation.

And she earned the consuming hatred of her political adversaries who were many and powerful. When she was re-elected by her constituency of privileged and wealthy Jews in Houghton in 1961, Prime Minister H.F. Verwoerd put out the word to the Jewish community in South Africa that their behaviour "has not gone unnoticed". The Jewish community felt pride in her work and her representation while worrying about the potential for a rebound.

President P.W. Botha described her as a "nasty little cat" and when Hendrik Van den Berg, a former Nazi sympathizer was given the post of head of security police she named him "South Africa's very own Heinrich Himmler". She suggested that Prime Minister B.J. Vorster might undertake to place a visit to his constituency "heavily disguised as a human being". Her cutting sense of humour, her outright betrayal of apartheid sensibilities indelibly marked her as an infuriatingly impossible rebel.

She undertook to visit the country's prisons, the first time a white woman had ever done such a thing. And witnessing the degraded conditions under which prisoners were kept, insisted on changes in recognition of the humanity of the inmates. The ruling National Party accused her of the intolerably criminal offence of having "communist friends" as a result of her defence of all of the country's apartheid critics, including the African National Congress.

Nelson Mandela recognized and appreciated and valued the part she played in winning concessions for those who were persecuted, including himself. His release from prison in 1990, when she was no longer active in politics, felt like a victory to her, recompense for her long struggles on behalf of decency and humanity. But despite her friendship with Nelson Mandela, when Thabo Mbeki succeeded him as head of the African National Congress in 1999, she felt free to criticize the ANC, and made no secret of her distaste for President Mbeki.

Thabo Mbeki's betrayal of his people, in his casual disdain for the need to help victims of HIV/AIDS, his belief that the virus was deliberately unleashed on South Africans by the racist West, his support of absurdly inappropriate 'treatments' for AIDS prevention, and his appointment of a minister of health whose ignorance matched his own, earned her ire. As did his support of Robert Mugabe, the tyrant extraordinaire of Zimbabwe.

She fought a bitterly long and hard battle against apartheid, only to become aware, in the last years of her life, that the State of Israel, created for the single-most vital purpose of offering haven to world Jewry, was labelled an apartheid state. Jimmy Carter had much potential and little grace. His own American society, so long an ex-officio partner of social and racial apartheid did not particularly reflect well on his personal efforts.

It was the generalized relaxation of American society as an entirety that finally relented to the extent that a man of colour, of partial foreign heritage, could be acclaimed a new leader, and voted overwhelmingly into the presidency. It's unclear how Mr. Carter's efforts played out in this scenario. It's abundantly clear what the social-political exertions of Helen Suzman accomplished in turning her society away from its pernicious human-rights-denying accomplished.