Nelson Mandela

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead (Lab)]

My Lords, I was privileged to meet Nelson Mandela on several occasions. On each occasion, I was inspired by him and marvelled at his strength and courage. I am also proud to report that he poured me a cup of tea at his home in Soweto, soon after his release; indeed, I can boast that I have been hugged by him.

From the 1960s until the end of the 1980s, in the anti-apartheid movement we struggled with the idea that apartheid could be overcome peacefully, but we knew that it would eventually end as a political system, leaving in its wake the misery and suffering that it had created. We watched from afar those barricades of burning tyres and the street battles fought in the townships by unarmed youngsters against a well armed and brutal police force set upon destroying black opposition. In desperation, Nelson Mandela advocated and engaged in the armed resistance in the early 1960s, but it was he who insisted upon peace and reconciliation when the white minority eased its grip on power 30 years later.

Like others here today, I joined the anti-apartheid movement in the 1960s and can confirm that that wonderful solidarity movement, through every form of persuasion—from letters to newspapers, mass picketing and demonstrations to rugby and cricket pitch invasions—was able to play a part in shifting public opinion and in exposing the apartheid regime as an international pariah. It is, indeed, regrettable that the anti-apartheid movement did not enjoy the support of the Government or the Prime Minister of the day. However, I believe that the world is a better place because of the solidarity that was shown in those dark days, with South Africans seeking justice and freedom. Nelson Mandela publicly emphasised the contribution made by those efforts in the United Kingdom to isolate the apartheid state.

Now we mourn the man who achieved so much, who challenged the might of white minority apartheid and who forged a new rainbow nation after 27 years in prison. In the last few days we have realised how much he meant to us and how much respect and affection he has earned across the world. He was loved and he will be missed, not least by his beloved wife, Graca Machel. I can only imagine her great sadness at her loss. It was she who gave him love, trust and real happiness. Nelson famously said that Graca made him “bloom like a flower”; we know that she will be feeling deeply her loss at this time.

Other noble Lords have mentioned Nelson Mandela’s visit as the first democratically elected President of the Republic of South Africa to speak to the joint Houses of Parliament in 1996. He said:

“We are in the Houses in which Harold Macmillan worked: he who spoke in our own Houses of Parliament in Cape Town in 1960, shortly before the infamous Sharpeville Massacre, and warned a stubborn and race-blinded white oligarchy in our country that,

‘the wind of change is blowing through the continent’;

he to whom a South African cartoonist paid tribute by having him recite other Shakespearean words,

‘Oh, pardon me thou bleeding piece of earth,

That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!’”.

Then he said:

“We have come as friends to all the people of the native land of the Archbishop Trevor Huddleston”—

a great friend and comrade to Madiba—

“who in his gentle compassion for the victim, resolved to give no quarter to any butcher”.

He went on to emphasise the nature of the relationship between South Africa and Britain, which was,

“not one between poor citizens on the one hand and good patricians on the other, but one underwritten by our common humanity and our human capacity to touch one another’s hearts across the oceans”.

No one could have articulated the great cause of liberty and solidarity better; and no one did.