Mary Turok

Turok attended the University of Cape Town, where she became involved in progressive politics and met Ben Turok, the man she married;{{Cite web |date=31 March 2020 |title=Mary Butcher Turok |url=https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/mary-butcher-turok |access-date=2023-04-19 |website=South African History Online}} she succeeded him as the secretary of Cape Town's Modern Youth Society.{{Cite journal |last=Joseph |first=Natasha |date=2014 |title=Cape crusader: Interview with South Africa's Ben Turok |journal=Index on Censorship |language=en |volume=43 |issue=2 |pages=88–92 |doi=10.1177/0306422014534385 |s2cid=147525539 |issn=0306-4220|doi-access=free }} She was among the first white activists to join the ANC's 1952 Defiance Campaign,{{Cite web |title=Participants in the 1952 Defiance Campaign |url=https://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/image.php?kid=163-577-17 |access-date=2023-04-19 |website=South Africa: Overcoming Apartheid}} although membership of the ANC itself was at that time limited to black Africans.

She was a founding member of the Congress of Democrats (COD) and was COD's delegate to the All-African Peoples' Conference, and she also joined the SACP, at that time banned by the apartheid government. She was detained for six months for aiding the illegal ANC.{{Cite web |last=Kotze |first=Karen |date=2019-12-12 |title=Anti-apartheid activist Turok remembered |url=https://www.falsebayecho.co.za/news/anti-apartheid-activist-turok-remembered |access-date=2023-04-19 |website=False Bay Echo |language=en-ZA}} Albie Sachs, who was her political colleague at the time, later said that she was both "warm and formidable".{{Cite web |date=2019-12-12 |title=Turok dedicated life to welfare of all South Africans |url=https://www.sajr.co.za/turok-dedicated-life-to-welfare-of-all-south-africans/ |access-date=2023-04-19 |website=Jewish Report |language=en-ZA}}

In 1965, Turok's husband was released on house arrest after serving a three-year sentence for his activities with Umkhonto we Sizwe, 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 announced that his government would unban the ANC and SACP to facilitate negotiations to end apartheid. She joined the ANC structures that were being re-established inside the country after the party's return to exile,{{Cite web |last=Turok |first=Ben |date=11 December 2019 |title=Ben Turok: A political insider, but not so embedded as to be defensive |url=https://www.news24.com/citypress/voices/ben-turok-a-political-insider-but-not-so-embedded-as-to-be-defensive-20191210 |access-date=2023-04-19 |website=City Press |language=en-US}} and she publicly advocated for women to participate in the ongoing democratic transition, writing in the Star 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 and the new Constitution were being drafted?'{{Cite journal |last=Britton |first=Hannah E. |date=2002 |title=Coalition Building, Election Rules, and Party Politics: South African Women's Path to Parliament |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4187530 |journal=Africa Today |volume=49 |issue=4 |page=40 |doi=10.1353/at.2003.0036 |jstor=4187530 |issn=0001-9887|url-access=subscription }}

In the 1994 general election, South Africa's first under universal suffrage, Turok was elected to an ANC seat in the National Assembly, the new lower house of the South African Parliament.{{Cite web |date=24 May 1994 |title=Minutes of proceedings of the Constitutional Assembly |url=https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/history/MINUTES/CA24054.PDF |access-date=2 April 2023 |publisher=Department of Justice and Constitutional Development}} 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.{{Cite book |last=Lodge |first=Tom |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pzTi73seHzgC&q=mary+turok+parliament |title=Politics in South Africa: From Mandela to Mbeki |date=2003 |publisher=David Philip |isbn=978-0-85255-870-6 |page=272 |language=en}} Turok served a single term in her seat and left after the 1999 general election.

Turok had three children – Neil, Fred, and Ivan – with her husband Ben, who died in December 2019.{{Cite web |last=Herman |first=Paul |date=9 December 2019 |title=ANC veteran Ben Turok has died |url=https://www.news24.com/news24/breaking-anc-veteran-ben-turok-has-died-20191209 |access-date=2023-04-19 |website=News24 |language=en-US}} After retiring from frontline politics, the couple retired to the coastal suburbs of Cape Town, and Turok was an active member of the Muizenberg Tenants' Association{{Cite web |date=2001-11-02 |title=New century, new town |url=https://mg.co.za/article/2001-11-02-new-century-new-town/ |access-date=2023-04-19 |website=The Mail & Guardian |language=en-ZA}} and later of the Noordhoek Ratepayers' Association.

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Category:Living people

Category:Year of birth missing (living people)

Category:University of Cape Town alumni

Category:African National Congress politicians

Category:Members of the National Assembly of South Africa 1994–1999

Category:Women members of the National Assembly of South Africa

Category:Members of the South African Communist Party

Category:21st-century South African politicians

Category:21st-century South African women politicians

Category:20th-century South African women politicians

Category:White South African anti-apartheid activists

Category:South African anti-apartheid activists