Tributes to Nelson Mandela

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to speak in this debate. I will try to be brief because so many brilliant contributions have been made today by people who fought the good fight to try to rid the world of the scourge of apartheid.

I want us to recall the many people who died in South Africa fighting against apartheid, from those who were discriminated against from 1948 onwards, when the National party won the election, to the massacre at Sharpeville, the riots in Soweto, the killing of schoolchildren and the murder of Steve Biko and so many others who died, often completely ignored and forgotten. We should also recall the poverty of the black majority population in South Africa—a poverty inherited from colonialism, a poverty arising from work in the mines and so many other places, a poverty of children going to school where there was no water, no electricity, no books and very little else, and unbelievable discrimination in employment, land ownership and everything else. It was a system of dividing people on racial grounds that the Nazis would have been proud of. The idea that there would be some sort of accommodation with apartheid was something that many of us found anathema.

It was not as though the evil of apartheid extended only to the country of South Africa. It extended to the neighbouring states and greatly influenced the white supremacist regime in Rhodesia led by Ian Smith. It also included the war in Namibia—South West Africa, as it was then called—and it spread over into the problems faced by all the front-line states during the apartheid era because of their wish to impose sanctions on South Africa. It also spread over into Angola. The war in Angola was one of the turning points in the defeat of apartheid. Let us remember that it was the South African defence forces that went to the aid of another minority regime in Angola, and they were finally defeated in the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1988. Those were the significant changes that brought about a political reckoning in South Africa.

Those around the world who would recognise only the ANC and would not recognise the Government of South Africa are the ones we should also remember today—those people all around the world who took part in meetings, marches and demonstrations, and many Governments who bravely stood against the apartheid regime when it was in their economic interests to go in absolutely the opposite direction. There are therefore some very strong lessons for all of us to learn during our remembrance of Nelson Mandela.

The personality of Mandela was an extraordinary one. I was asked a question when I was visiting Holloway school last Friday morning and went into a history lesson. There was a discussion about the civil rights movement in the USA, the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Britain and of course the Anti-Apartheid Movement in South Africa. The students asked me whether Mandela would have been a better or worse president if he had never gone to prison. It is an impossible question to answer. All I could say was that I remember distinctly my mother telling me how evil the Rivonia treason trial and the Sharpeville massacre were, and how wrong it was that Mandela and all the others went to prison. In their suffering they obviously read and learned a great deal. In his final unconditional release from prison—it is very important to remember that it was an unconditional release from prison; he was offered all sorts of get out of jail cards many years beforehand—he displayed such amazing magnanimity.

I recall that when Mandela came here to Parliament shortly after his release—he was not President of South Africa at that time—there were Conservative MPs who wanted the meeting banned. There were people who said no MP should attend it. There were people who said that he was a terrorist. There were people who said that people like him should not be allowed into Parliament, but I remember the very good discussion that was held here. My right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) was there, as were Richard Caborn, chair of the anti-apartheid group, Bob Hughes, Tony Benn and many others. We had a truly fascinating discussion with a very great man who was forming his ideas of how he would lead a post-apartheid, multiracial, rainbow nation of South Africa.

I want to conclude with some thoughts about the people who were in prison with Mandela and also suffered a great deal. My constituency, Islington North, is a place where many people have sought refuge at various times and have been welcomed. I was very proud that David Kitson, one of those imprisoned with Mandela, lived in my constituency for a long time. Denis Goldberg, who was also in prison with Mandela, lived nearby and ran a bookshop for a charity called Community HEART which still exists, collecting books to be sent to schools in South Africa. We also housed the offices of the British defence and aid fund for victims of apartheid. I was a trustee of that, with the great Ethel de Keyser and others. We were able to fund education for victims of apartheid and do our bit to try to help the next generation of African leaders who had been born in the front-line states in exile camps to get some kind of university education. Many people did incredible work in that regard.

My local authority, Islington borough council, declared itself an apartheid-free zone. This was not universally welcomed by the Evening Standard, the Conservative Government or many others. In saying that, I look at my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn). Many of us who were involved in local government or as Members of Parliament during the 1970 and 1980s did our bit. Okay, it might be said that it is gesture politics to name a street Mandela street or to name your student union building the Nelson Mandela building, but in that act you are showing which side you are on in the battle against apartheid. When we were being condemned by the media at that time, I always thought, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, for they know not what they do.” Now they are all agreeing with us, as unfortunately they were unable to do at that time. Many of those who stood up then were in advance of others.

We also housed in my borough the offices of the African National Congress at Penton street. That building was under the most massive surveillance from the Metropolitan police, the South African secret service and every other secret service one could imagine. Indeed, the Anti-Apartheid Movement was infiltrated. The ANC offices were infiltrated. There were some ghastly goings-on in London via the long reach of the South African secret service. Also under surveillance and questioning were the offices of the South West Africa People’s Organisation, SWAPO, which had its offices in Gillespie road in my constituency.

A number of parliamentary colleagues of mine, including the late great Tony Banks and Stuart Holland, a former Member, and I were arrested outside South Africa house. It was one of those strange moments when you are arrested by the police and you say, “On what charge am I arrested?”, assuming that one is going be told that one is creating an obstruction or some such charge. The police said no, it was under the Diplomatic Immunities Act, for behaviour that was offensive to a foreign diplomatic mission. The police officer asked me, “What do you plead? Why have you come here?”. I said, “I’ve come here to be as offensive as possible to the South African apartheid regime, but I offer no plea, so you will have to offer a plea of not guilty on my part.” The cases all went to court and we were all exonerated on the grounds of our moral outrage at apartheid and all given compensation, and all that compensation was given to the ANC and the Anti-Apartheid Movement. Some things do come full circle in the end.

Finally, in thanking so many people for all their work in the Anti-Apartheid Movement I must mention my friend the late great Bernie Grant, who went to South Africa to witness the release of Nelson Mandela. When he returned, Margaret Thatcher invited him to Downing street to discuss what he thought about it all—it must have been a pretty surreal moment for both of them. I hope that a record of the meeting was kept, but I imagine that its release is subject to the 100-year rule, or perhaps a million-year rule. I can well imagine what Bernie would have said, but I am not sure about the leaderene.

There are lessons to be learned from all that, so I will conclude with the following thoughts. After his release, Mandela of course became President of South Africa and did enormous and wonderful work, but poverty has not been conquered there. There are still children who need better schools and people who need homes, electricity and water, as Denis Goldberg reminded us at a Community HEART fundraiser. But Mandela also had things to say about other issues around the world. He was deeply concerned about the plight of the Palestinian people and sent them messages of support, not because he wanted the conflict to continue but because he wanted it to end.

Another of Mandela’s great legacies was to say, as President, that he did not wish to preside over a Government who had nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction. He took South Africa out of the nuclear equation, thus enabling Africa to become a nuclear weapons-free continent. There are many lessons we can learn from that. In Nelson’s memory, let us change things a bit here. That will make for a better, safer and more peaceful world.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—