Nelson Mandela

Baroness Boothroyd Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boothroyd (CB)]

My Lords, rightly, much has been said about Nelson Mandela’s genius at forging friendships across the divide of politics and creating unity out of discord. I saw him demonstrate this skill during his state visit to Britain in 1996. It is among my most treasured memories. He was undoubtedly the greatest statesman to visit Westminster in my lifetime.

I witnessed his self-discipline and professionalism when he made his memorable address, void of all bitterness, to the joint session of Parliament in Westminster Hall. I was worried about him negotiating the narrow steps of that hall, worn by a thousand years of history. I had warned him about them at the state banquet in Buckingham Palace the night before and I did so again next morning. “Don’t worry, Madam Speaker”, he said, when we met at St Stephen’s entrance. “I came to look at them at 6 o’clock this morning”. What a man he was. The trumpets sounded and with that he took my hand and we mounted the steps of St Stephen’s and into great Westminster Hall. He was then 78 years old. After the ceremony he made straight for Margaret Thatcher, who was in the audience, smiling happily, hand outstretched. She had branded him and the African National Congress as terrorists and she had resisted punitive sanctions against apartheid. But Mandela held no grudges. He said he hated apartheid—not white people.

Naturally, he will be remembered as South Africa’s first black president. But that was only half his achievement. What matters perhaps even more is that he was South Africa’s first democratic president—the first, we hope, in a long line of democratic leaders who will safeguard his legacy.

I was Chancellor of the Open University when we last met. I went to Cape Town to present him with the OU’s honorary doctorate. He was very fragile even at that stage, but he was gracious and as modest as ever. “I’m all right”, he told the press at a press conference afterwards, “Don’t worry, I’m all right”. He said, “I will tell you one thing. As soon as I get to those pearly gates you can be sure that I shall join the local branch of the ANC”.

There was no artifice about him. He believed in old-fashioned courtesies, tolerance and conciliation—qualities our own political leaders would do well to try sometime. But he was no stranger to discord. Mandela held the moral high ground and he created a rainbow nation shorn of the colour bar.

Much remains to be done in South Africa but his achievement set him apart among world leaders. He dispelled the racial prejudices that oppressed his people, disgraced its perpetrators and held his country back. He believed that the point of freedom was to make others free.

Goodbye Madiba, may we follow where you led.