Helen Suzman’s Perpetual Rage Helped Create the Liberal Paradise of South Africa

Helen Suzman
Heard these jokes about Jewish mothers?
Q: Why aren’t there any Jewish mothers on parole boards?
A: They’d never let anyone finish a sentence.
Q: What did the waiter ask the group of Jewish mothers?
A: “Is anything all right?”
Q: What’s the difference between a Rottweiler and a Jewish Mother?
A: Eventually, the Rottweiler lets go.
These jokes are funny because they reflect reality. Here is a real example of a Jewish woman using verbal aggression and self-righteousness to get her own way:
Helen Suzman deserves her tribute alongside Nelson Mandela
The forgotten saint of the anti-apartheid movement, her legacy to liberalism was to abandon the armchair. … For an astonishing 36 years Suzman was a flickering flame of white conscience in apartheid South Africa. For 13 of those years she carried that light alone, a one-woman party in a parliamentary sanctum of hostile men. While some came to admire her, most loathed her, and tried to drive her from their presence. They jeered her interventions with sexist, antisemitic, domineering abuse. The anti-apartheid activist Helen Joseph wrote that “even house arrest” must have been less lonely. Suzman’s resistance must be among the most courageous parliamentary careers ever. Read more