Guest Blogger: Bonita Meyersfeld

It is IntLawGrrls great pleasure to welcome Bonita Meyersfeld (left) as today's guest blogger. Bonita is an associate professor of law at the University of Witwatersrand School of Law in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is also the head of gender at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies and an editor on the South African Journal on Human Rights. Bonita teaches international law, business and human rights and, prior to working in South Africa, was a legal advisor in the House of Lords in the United Kingdom. Bonita obtained her LLB from Wits Law School and her LLM and JSD from Yale Law School and was a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics.
Bonita has written, lectured and presented in Africa, the United States, Canada and Europe in the areas of international human rights law, transitional justice, women’s rights, business and human rights and development.
Bonita has worked as a litigator and legal advisor, advising South African governmental departments on developmental projects, particularly regarding water and gas distribution. She has also worked as gender consultant to the International Center for Transitional Justice in New York and as a legal consultant at Interights in London.
In her guest post below, Bonita blogs today on her excellent new book, Domestic Violence and International Law, which is part of a larger body of her work focusing on intimate systemic violence and international law.
Bonita has selected Helen Suzman (below right, with Nelson Mandela) (credit) as her IntLawGrrls foremother:

I would like to dedicate this blog to Helen Suzman, anti-apartheid activist and politician. Ms Suzman, who died in January 2009, was a rare personality whose commitment to justice and intellectual integrity found her alone in parliament fighting the battle of racial equality against the apartheid government in South Africa. Ms Suzman’s work is notable for being robust at a time when equality and human rights were not popular concepts. She pursued her line of work in the face of personal danger, political opposition and social approbation. The demise of apartheid is due in no small part to her work.

A Tribute to Helen Suzman

Helen Suzman, a lion of the anti-apartheid movement, died peacefully at her home in Johannesburg yesterday at the age of 91. South Africa's flags will fly at half-mast on Sunday to mourn her passing, a fitting tribute to an "indomitable" and "stroppy" "powerhouse against apartheid", in the words of Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. Suzman, a member of South Africa's Parliament from the wealthy Johannesburg district of Houghton from 1953 until 1989, used her position to fight tirelessly against apartheid, often as a sole dissenting voice -- the "cricket in the thorn tree", as she was known. She served thirteen years as the sole liberal MP, six of those as the only female amongst 165 male MPs. Despite these daunting circumstances, Suzman continually stood up for justice and equality:

Helen's reputation was built not on lofty thoughts and resounding speeches, but on hard work. One by one, as they came off the assembly line, she shredded the bills that removed civil liberties. One by one, she tore her parliamentary colleagues apart for their callousness, ignorance and ineptitude. Day after day, she would meet the poor, either in her office, or more often in their own shacks, listening to their tales of sorrow and sadness, of hurt and hatred.

With typical chutzpah, she would accost ministers in the parliamentary lobby or beard police officers in their dens, and demand to know why some nameless person of colour was being deprived of his or her rights.

In Suzman's own words, "I am provocative, and I admit this. It isn't as if I'm only on the receiving end, a poor, frail little creature. I can be thoroughly nasty when I get going, and I don't pull my punches." The world will be a poorer place without those punches, though Suzman's fighting spirit will continue to inspire us to speak out against injustice and agitate for change.