Established in 1993 to honour the life and work of Helen Suzman, the HSF exists to promote the ideas and values that she espoused in her public life. As a politician, activist and decades-long opponent of injustice, she said: ‘I am proud to acknowledge that I am liberal . . . who adheres to old-fashioned liberal values such as the rule of law, universal franchise, free elections, a free press, free association, guaranteed civil rights and an independent judiciary.’
The liberal tradition is an old, popular but contested one. What it means to be ‘liberal’ is disputed. Liberals disagree not only on details, but also as regards some of its most basic principles.
For example, some think that it is a theory of restrained power that is concerned with securing individuals from state oppression. Others think that it is about free markets. Others still think that it is about human progress, with some focusing on individuals and their unique capacities, and others on the mutual interdependence of all people. Yet a further derivation emerges when some liberals exclusively emphasise notions of diversity and tolerance.
At the HSF, we resist efforts to categorise liberalism in these narrow ways. Attempts to transform liberalism into a simplistic, and easily caricatured, ideology must be resisted. Alan Paton once crisply alluded to this: 'By liberalism I don't mean the creed of any party or any century. I mean a generosity of spirit, a tolerance of others, an attempt to comprehend otherness, a commitment to the rule of law, a high ideal of the worth and dignity of man, a repugnance of authoritarianism and a love of freedom.'
Liberalism embraces many ideas, principles and values. It is often associated with concepts such as liberty, rationality, individuality, progress, sociability and general interest. True, other non-liberal schools employ such concepts. But, what distinguishes them from liberalism, and what unifies the concepts and strands of thought discussed above, is liberalism’s emphasis on the relationship between politics and autonomy. At its core, liberals promote the idea that the source of all politics—power, institutions and laws—lies in the free and willing choices of individual women and men.
This is all quite abstract. So, let us be a little more concrete. What conception of liberalism does the HSF advocate?
The ideas, principles and values that constitute the core of liberalism are explicitly recognised and endorsed by the Constitution—in its Preamble, the foundation clauses and Bill of Rights. The liberal vision of Helen Suzman, therefore, is embodied in the text of the Constitution. Her vision is a legal reality.
The HSF exists to help ensure that these ideas and values reach beyond the law, in a way that they are realised in practice. The law must benefit all. It is this liberal vision that we strive to defend and promote in our research and in our policy work. Importantly, especially at this time in our still young, fragile democracy, it is this vision that motivates our litigation against individuals and factions who abuse, for personal gain, political power.
So, we shall continue, in all of the work that we do, to ask questions of those who exercise power. We shall do this no matter how subversive or invasive their tactics, no matter how embarrassing their answers.
Matthew Kruger
Legal Researcher
matthew@hsf.org.za