Word: suzman
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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...
However much Suzman's gibe may have irritated South Africa's whites and enraged her Nationalist opponents, it was essentially accurate. While the country's whites are not so isolated as they used to be now that bombs are going off every day or so in one or another of the biggest cities, the very geography of apartheid has long and effectively separated whites and blacks. Whites are not only physically removed from black residential areas but dangerously isolated from the evidence of mounting black rage...
...even if they wanted one, which most do not. Furthermore, an emigrant is allowed to take no more than $40,000 with him, although he can subsequently withdraw the earnings from any remaining investments in South Africa. Says Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, former parliamentary leader of Helen Suzman's opposition Progressive Federal Party: "The chap with the double garage and two kids in school is going to have to think very hard." Even among those who would like to leave, most seem to have decided that they cannot afford to do so. They stay, but they are worrying more about...
...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...