Tributes to Nelson Mandela

Gerald Kaufman Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

For an exhibition that it was planning to mount, the National Portrait Gallery asked me to nominate the three greatest figures of the 20th century and the reasons why. I nominated Winston Churchill for saving this country in the second world war, Mikhail Gorbachev for ending the cold war and Nelson Mandela for being Nelson Mandela.

The first time I met Nelson Mandela was when he visited Sweden after he had been released from prison. He said that Sweden was the country that had done most to help him be released, so he visited it first. It gave a grand state dinner, to which Neil Kinnock, as leader of the Labour party, and I as shadow Foreign Secretary were invited. The next day, Neil and I organised a private lunch for Nelson Mandela and his wife and friends.

Not long before that, during the first session of Prime Minister’s Question Time after Mandela’s release from prison—he was released on a Sunday, and in those days we had Prime Minister’s questions on Tuesdays—my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) rose and started her question with the words, to Margaret Thatcher,

“If the Prime Minister had just spent 27 years in prison”.—[Official Report, 13 February 1990; Vol. 167, c. 140.]

I was sitting on the Front Bench, and I murmured to Roy Hattersley, “As she should.” The microphones caught my remark, and the entire House heard it. On the Conservative side, not surprisingly, there was extremely loud outrage. On our side, there were the best cheers I think I have ever had in the House of Commons.

At the lunch in Stockholm, when we were being introduced to our guests, Oliver Tambo’s wife came up to me and said, “You are the man who said that Margaret Thatcher should be in prison for 27 years.” At the end of the room was Winnie Mandela, and when Winnie heard that, she rushed over to me, hugged me, and said, “You are the man! You are the man!” As a result of that, Nelson Mandela very kindly gave me the following inscription:

“To Gorton Labour Party, with our comradely compliments and best wishes, Nelson Mandela”.

Apart from all his other virtues, he had the most beautiful handwriting. Added to that inscription was:

“Thank you for your solidarity.

Much love

Winnie Mandela”.

That remained on the wall of Gorton Labour club for many years, until Winnie became renowned not so much for hugging as for putting burning tyres around the necks of her opponents, and it was taken down. It is on the wall in my house now.

At the lunch, Neil Kinnock asked Nelson Mandela about the visit to South Africa by a rebel English cricket team. There was a sporting and an entertainment boycott of South Africa at the time, but a group of very well-known English cricketers went there to play. Neil asked Nelson Mandela, “What do you think of the English cricketers who are in South Africa now?” Nelson Mandela said, “I admire them.” Neil said, “What? You admire them? Why? How can you?” Nelson Mandela said, “Because they are very brave. They knew before they came that there would be demonstrations outside the cricket grounds because they were there and breaking the boycott, and they came all the same.”

Somewhat later, when I was lunching with Nelson Mandela, I asked him—among a number of other things—what he had learnt in prison. He said that one of the things that had kept him going had been reading the memoirs of Menachem Begin, who started out as a terrorist—which Mandela did not—but became Prime Minister of Israel and made peace with Egypt. He was the last Prime Minister of Israel to make peace with anyone. I asked, “What did you learn from Menachem Begin’s memoirs?” He said, “Menachem Begin was in prison for a long time, and his book said that the most important thing to do if you were in prison was to sustain your values.” I do not think that Nelson Mandela needed to be taught that lesson, but—as has been said so widely in the House this afternoon—he certainly did sustain his values. He never, never, never took revenge of any kind. That was not because he was a softie. He was a tough man—you cannot get through 27 years in prison without being a tough man. But what he knew was that you can solve a huge political problem by being generous, forthcoming and reconciling, and that is what he did.

When I was shadow Foreign Secretary, I visited South Africa, then under apartheid, as a guest of the South African Council of Churches. I met Africans and I visited the townships, and I was followed wherever I went by the South African secret police. At a lunch in Durban with leading people, including Mbeki, I said, “I hope you’re not going to pick up the worst of the apartheid regime, and that you will be better than the apartheid regime ever could be when you, as you will, eventually achieve power in South Africa. In particular, I hope that you will not keep the death penalty, and that you will have liberal judicial policies.” Under Mandela, they did that, and it is hugely to the credit of Mandela and the ANC.

Too many other countries that have gained their freedom have nevertheless imposed penalties of the worst kind on their opponents. They were not saints who took over in South Africa, but they were good, sensible politicians, who knew that the best way of winning is by reconciling. That came so much from Mandela. His autobiography, “The Long Walk to Freedom”—I reviewed it and was proud to have my name on the dust cover—was written by him, not ghosted, and his personality comes out from every page. It said that people should be realistic and sensible in their politics and, at the same time, be forgiving and reconciliatory. We shall not see his like again.