Biographical Information Provided
by
Ivan Mfowethu Suzman
The Ivan Mfowethu Suzman Maine Project on Southern Africa Video Library Collection.
Ivan Suzman's commentary on the videos in the collection.
Ivan Mfowethu Suzman lived in South Africa for seven years, from
1973 through 1979. During that time he was a post-graduate student
at the University
of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, part of
the paleoanthropology research team there, teaching and researching
in the medical school's department of anatomy.
His middle name, Mfowethu, is very unusual, in that it is an
Nguni word, Nguni being in the language family of Zulu, Xhosa, and
other related languages. The name, which means Our Brother, was
given to him upon his return to the United States in 1979 by the
black South African exiled community in the Minneapolis area where
he was teaching at the University
of Minnesota.
While in South Africa, he married an American, Lee Hoover. He
continued to work on his doctorate, and she worked for an Afrikaans-language
company. It was acommercial art firm and advertising agency with
many government contracts, very involved with supporting the South
African system.
The university was beset with strikes and walkouts while he was
there. In the midst of the turmoil following the 1976 uprisings,
called the Soweto riots by the white press and Soweto uprisings
by the black press, he and his wife became the targets of surveillance.
This was partly because of his last name, Suzman, the same as Helen
Suzman, the very famous South African politician who is a relative
of his by marriage. She was then the only member of the Progressive
Party, later the Progressive Federal Party, in the entire parliament.
Her name was enough to draw suspicion to them because of her great
work in trying to filibuster the government about political prisoners
and conditions of families whose relatives were in prison. She would
try to get access to the prisoners for their families, and rights
for them to be visited. At that time, while Nelson Mandela was in
prison at Robben Island and Winnie Mandela was banished to the Orange
Free State, she became their friend. She was especially famous for
her anti-government rhetoric and efforts in parliament as a woman
and the lone member of the Progressive Party against the nationalist
party then in power.
He was on an educational visa and Lee on a temporary visitor's
permit. In 1978 harassment began with a South African police agent
following him through the stacks of the medical school library and
going through his graduate student office. At the same time, someone
tried to break into their apartment, and they were denied a telephone
license (one had to have a license to have a telephone). They couldn't
communicate by telephone from their apartment, and Lee would tell
him of a man watching her, who turned out to be the same man watching
him. Ultimately, he discovered that the agent was a South African
of Asian origin, who worked in a bank, Volkskas, the People's Cash,
as a teller.
They decided the pressure was becoming too much. At that time,
more than half of the students who graduated from the medical school
were leaving the country for places like Australia, England and
Canada, and, occasionally, the United States, Germany, and France.
They left the country in July of 1979 under continued surveillance
after their car had disappeared and after he had been arrested and
fingerprinted for illegal parking. Student demonstrations were going
on constantly at the university, and there were many killings, including
over 1000 Africans in Johannesburg following the Soweto uprisings.
They left for the University of Minnesota where he taught in the
department of anatomy and was an adjunct in the department of anthropology.
He then came to Maine to teach at the University of New England Medical School, and continued as a visiting lecturer at Bowdoin College in the department of sociology and anthropology and in the department of biology. He currently resides in Portland.
Maintained by George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives Staff
Bowdoin College Library, 3000 College Station, Brunswick, Maine 04011-8421
email: scaref@bowdoin.edu / telephone: (207) 725-3288
©Bowdoin College 2004
Bowdoin College Library, 3000 College Station, Brunswick, Maine 04011-8421
email: scaref@bowdoin.edu / telephone: (207) 725-3288
©Bowdoin College 2004