Tributes to Nelson Mandela

Huw Irranca-Davies Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

After so many brilliant speeches, I have the humble task of presenting the thanks of the constituents of Ogmore for, frankly, a towering figure of the 20th century, who faced the most extreme adversity and was prepared to live and, as we have heard, to die in fighting the evil oppression of apartheid, while also being outspoken in the defence of many other oppressed people throughout the world. Nelson Mandela was very human—flawed in the way that we are both blessed and cursed to be, and open to doubts, despair and errors, as we all are—but he never wavered from his central mission to remove the stain of apartheid from South Africa. In doing so, he went further and reminded all of us flawed individuals that we can strive to be our better selves, the people we want to be and the embodiment of the society we want to create.

We have to learn and re-learn those lessons anew each time we face oppression and cruelty or attacks on freedom and equality. The continued oppression of so many people in so many countries and regions around the world is a continuing reminder that such battles for freedom, equality and tolerance will continue, and that we should never turn away and never be silent.

Yet Nelson Mandela showed time and again that victory and success are found not just in how people battle their oppressors, but in how they seek the peace and rebuilding of a nation. After 27 years of captivity and isolation, after his release and his subsequent electoral success, and at every moment at which he might understandably have sought vengeance, he sought only truth and reconciliation. In place of hubris, there was humility. In the early days after apartheid, when he and the ANC could have turned against their former oppressors, he urged them to turn towards them and to work together for a better collective future. The magnitude of that magnanimity is incredible, even today. It is compelling evidence of the tactical and visionary leadership of Nelson Mandela.

I had the privilege, like many Labour MPs, of seeing Nelson Mandela speak at the Labour conference. He carried the expectations of a nation on his back. No matter how strong the frame, that is a weight that could break lesser men. What is not often remarked upon is his humour—a bright and infectious easy-going humour. Despite having had the most grotesque and extreme of life’s Kafkaesque travails visited upon him and his fellow men, women and children in South Africa—or perhaps because of that—he came through it all with an optimism that people are capable of the greatness, compassion, kindness and collective good will that will ultimately defeat the terror of the darkest night.

Flawed as we are, we are capable of far better than we imagine. We can be better than we think we are. That is perhaps the greatest and the most enduring global legacy of Nelson Mandela.