Mary Elizabeth Turok () is a retired South African politician and former

anti-apartheid activist Several independent sectors of South African society opposed apartheid through various means, including social movements, passive resistance, and guerrilla warfare. Mass action against the ruling National Party (NP) government, coupled with So ...

who represented the

African National Congress The African National Congress (ANC) is a political party in South Africa. It originated as a liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid and has governed the country since 1994, when the 1994 South African general election, fir ...

(ANC) in the

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repr ...

from 1994 to 1999. A veteran of the

South African Communist Party The South African Communist Party (SACP) is a communist party in South Africa. It was founded on 12 February 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), and tactically dissolved itself in 1950 in the face of being declared illegal by t ...

(SACP) and

Congress of Democrats The Congress of Democrats (CoD) is a Namibian opposition party without representation in the National Assembly and was led by Ben Ulenga from 2004 to 2015. It was established in 1999, prior to that year's general elections, and started off w ...

, she lived in exile from 1964 to 1990 after her husband,

Ben Turok Benjamin Turok (26 June 1927 – 9 December 2019) was a South African anti-apartheid activist, politician, and economics professor. He represented the African National Congress in the post-apartheid National Assembly from 1994 to 2014. Early l ...

, was imprisoned for his activism.

Early life and activism

Turok attended the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) (, ) is a public university, public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university status in 1918, making it the oldest univer ...

, where she became involved in progressive politics and met

, the man she married; she succeeded him as the secretary of

Cape Town Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...

's Modern Youth Society. She was among the first white activists to join the ANC's 1952

Defiance Campaign The Defiance Campaign against Unjust Laws was presented by the African National Congress (ANC) at a conference held in Bloemfontein, South Africa, in December 1951 in South Africa, 1951. The Campaign had roots in events leading up the conferenc ...

, although membership of the ANC itself was at that time limited to black Africans. She was a founding member of the

(COD) and was COD's delegate to the

All-African Peoples' Conference The All-African Peoples Conference (AAPC) was partly a corollary and partly a different perspective to the modern Africa states represented by the First Conference of Independent Africa States held in 1957. In contrast to this first meeting where o ...

, and she also joined the SACP, at that time banned by the

apartheid Apartheid ( , especially South African English: , ; , ) was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an ...

government. She was detained for six months for aiding the illegal ANC.

Albie Sachs Albert "Albie" Louis Sachs (born 30 January 1935) is a South African lawyer, activist, writer, and former judge appointed to the first Constitutional Court of South Africa by Nelson Mandela. Early life and education Albie Sachs was born in ...

, who was her political colleague at the time, later said that she was both "warm and formidable". In 1965, Turok's husband was released on house arrest after serving a three-year sentence for his activities with

Umkhonto we Sizwe uMkhonto weSizwe (; abbreviated MK; ) was the paramilitary wing of the African National Congress (ANC), founded by Nelson Mandela in the wake of the Sharpeville massacre. Its mission was to fight against the South African government to brin ...

, and the couple fled South Africa with their children to evade further police attention. They remained in exile, primarily in Britain, for the next 24 years. Turok and her family returned to South Africa in early February 1990, shortly after President

F. W. de Klerk Frederik Willem de Klerk ( , ; 18 March 1936 – 11 November 2021) was a South African politician who served as the seventh and final state president of South Africa from 1989 to 1994 and as Deputy President of South Africa, deputy president a ...

announced that his government would unban the ANC and SACP to facilitate

negotiations to end apartheid The apartheid system in South Africa was ended through a series of bilateral and multi-party negotiations between 1990 and 1993. The negotiations culminated in the passage of a new interim Constitution in 1993, a precursor to the Constitution ...

. She joined the ANC structures that were being re-established inside the country after the party's return to exile, and she publicly advocated for women to participate in the ongoing democratic transition, writing in the ''

Star A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sk ...

'' in 1992:

Nowhere in the world have women been handed equality on a plate; everywhere they have had to fight for it. South Africa will be no exception. We do not want our daughters to turn on us in the years to come and ask: 'Where were you when the
Bill of Rights A bill of rights, sometimes called a declaration of rights or a charter of rights, is a list of the most important rights to the citizens of a country. The purpose is to protect those rights against infringement from public officials and pri ...
and the new
Constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed. When these pri ...
were being drafted?'

Legislative career

In the 1994 general election, South Africa's first under universal suffrage, Turok was elected to an ANC seat in the

, the new lower house of the

South African Parliament The Parliament of the Republic of South Africa is South Africa's legislature. It is located in Cape Town; the country's legislative capital. Under the present Constitution of South Africa, the bicameral Parliament comprises a National Asse ...

. Her husband joined her in another ANC seat in 1995; in 1998, the parliamentary register of members' interests recording that they were the richest members of Parliament, sharing R1.5 million in shareholdings. Turok served a single term in her seat and left after the 1999 general election.

Retirement and personal life

Turok had three children –

Neil Neil is a masculine name of Irish origin. The name is an anglicisation of the Irish ''Niall'' which is of disputed derivation. The Irish name may be derived from words meaning "cloud", "passionate", "victory", "honour" or "champion".. As a surname ...

, Fred, and Ivan – with her husband Ben, who died in December 2019. After retiring from frontline politics, the couple retired to the coastal suburbs of Cape Town, and Turok was an active member of the

Muizenberg Muizenberg ( , Dutch for 'mice mountain') is a beach-side town in the Western Cape, South Africa. It is situated where the shore of the Cape Peninsula curves round to the east on the False Bay coast. It is considered to be the main surfing spo ...

Tenants' Association and later of the Noordhoek Ratepayers' Association.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Turok, Mary Living people Year of birth missing (living people) University of Cape Town alumni African National Congress politicians Members of the National Assembly of South Africa 1994–1999 Women members of the National Assembly of South Africa Members of the South African Communist Party 21st-century South African politicians 21st-century South African women politicians 20th-century South African women politicians White South African anti-apartheid activists South African anti-apartheid activists