In No Uncertain Terms: Memoirs - Tapa dura

Helen Suzman was MP for Houghton in South Africa from 1953 until 1989. During that time, she used the forum of Parliament to speak out on behalf of equal justice for all human beings. Often, hers was the lone voice. For 13 years, she was the sole representative in Parliament of the Progressive Party. For six years, she was the only woman among 165 MPs. Her courage, dedication and debating skills earned her the respect of the outside world. She has received many honorary doctorates and awards at home and abroad. Born Helen Gavrosky in 1917, she married Mosie Suzman, a physician, had two daughters, and taught Economic History at Witwatersrand University. It was not until the mid-1940s that her passion for politics was fully kindled - when her study of migrant labour alerted her to the miseries caused by the apartheid system. Her memoirs tell the story of her subsequent battles for a more just society. Her weapons were humour, knowledge and logic; she was not afraid to fight for the legal rights of those with whom she personally disagreed, nor to make herself unpopular, and she was always determined to see for herself. She inspected the dreary areas to which blacks had been forcibly removed. She insisted on visiting Nelson Mandela in prison and Winnie Mandela in banishment; she attended the funerals of Steve Biko and Robert Sobukwe and other victims of the apartheid system. This autobiography is also a history from the inside, of a period in South Africa which has seen suffering and courage, injustice and violence, and latterly, astonishing changes.