Word: suzman
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...address to the graduating class of the University of Cape Town last week, Helen Suzman, the best-known opposition member of the South African Parliament, delivered a stinging rebuke to the Afrikaner-dominated government. Not only was South Africa divided into white and black worlds, she declared, but "in the vast majority of cases, the white citizens have never set foot in the world of the blacks. They have never been in a township, know nothing about the miserable conditions endured by people compelled to live in those areas. But most of all, they know nothing of the seething anger...
Since this was especially true of the majority of Members of Parliament from the ruling National Party, Suzman continued caustically, every Nationalist M.P. should be obliged to attend a black funeral "disguised as a human being." In that way, they might "get some idea of the intensity of feeling, of the heavy tide of resistance sweeping through the townships, instead of sitting on their green benches in Parliament, insulated like fish in an aquarium...
...Helen Suzman, the best-known opposition figure in the South African Parliament, read from a list of several hundred individuals believed to be in detention, demanding to know how many South Africans were actually in custody and how many of those were under 21. Declared Suzman: "South Africa has become like El Salvador and Argentina, where thousands of people go missing and the governments won't acknowledge where they are or whether they are dead or alive." At week's end Parliament adjourned until Aug. 18, depriving journalists for the next seven weeks of information elicited by the parliamentary questions...
...promise to lift the state of emergency won praise from one of his most implacable foes, Member of Parliament Helen Suzman of the Progressive Federal Party...
...Suzman told The Associated Press she was delighted because she assumed it meant the release of detainees...