Tributes to Nelson Mandela

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

It is a privilege to take part in this debate to pay tribute to Nelson Mandela and to join colleagues who have done that so wonderfully well across the House.

At the period of its greatest need in the last century, that beautiful, proud, rich and wonderfully diverse and talented country, South Africa, needed someone of Nelson Mandela’s stature to rescue it from what was, in my judgment and that of many others, inevitable civil war. There was a great probability of huge conflict and further killing to add to all the injustice, suffering and oppression that had gone before. After 40 years of pent-up repression since 1948, things could not have been held for much longer by the apartheid regime.

I, like others, became a student activist in the Young Liberals at the same time as the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain). I pay tribute to him and to his parents and his family for their example, having come to this country, in making people realise that we had an international duty of solidarity to others a long way away. Even if we could not directly affect what was happening, we could indirectly affect what was happening. The stop the tour campaign and the other actions certainly added to the changes that South Africa underwent.

Many people who have been in this place and are currently in the other place and elsewhere were part of the Anti-Apartheid Movement and led it in this country. Like others, I am very clear that Mike Terry was a stalwart of the movement, and I pay tribute to Bob Hughes, now in the other place. I pay tribute to Dick Caborn, with whom I reminisced only the other day, and to Glenys and Neil Kinnock and others in the Labour party in this country. I pay tribute, too, to my colleagues—to Jo Grimond, Jeremy Thorpe, David Steel and Paddy Ashdown, who were unrelenting in pursuing the case for a change in apartheid. I am glad that the hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) paid tribute to Helen Suzman, the sole white South African Opposition politician elected under the apartheid system, who challenged and challenged and challenged again the oppression of the apartheid regime.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) said in his moving speech, we were privileged first to visit South Africa together in 1986 with our friend, Peter Pike, and Anthony Cordle, who arranged for us to go. I have very rarely been in tears in my public life, but we landed on the day before the anniversary of the Crossroads massacre. We stayed in the house of John Reid, the pro vice chancellor of Cape Town university. He was breaking the law by having black students living with him and his family in his house in a comfortable suburb of Cape Town.

On the other side of the railway line was the destroyed settlement of Crossroads. When we went to the memorial service the next day South African defence force tanks circled around us—the Casspirs—where 20,000 people’s homes had been destroyed. It was more than I had ever imagined a place where liberty had been extinguished for the majority of the people, and the oppression of the military and the South African economic strength was bearing down on them. I pay tribute to those such as our friend Garth Collins, who had started building bridges, which meant that from staying in the townships, in places such as Soweto, and visiting activists there, we could in the same day go to talk privately and confidentially to people in the Government who understood that they would have to change their ways.

We met people in the Dutch Reformed Church who, even then, did not understand how evil was their interpretation of the Bible as they understood it. I remember Peter Pike and I meeting P.W. Botha. We saw him coming towards us and we had a terrible moment: do we shake the hand of somebody whom we have opposed and campaigned against all our lives—Peter as a trade unionist and anti-apartheid activist, Alistair and I—or do we not? We did so, although, I have to say, it was difficult. Nelson Mandela showed that you have to reach out, shake people by the hand and seek to persuade them that they need to change their ways.

In 1994 I was privileged to host some young South Africans, mainly black and coloured South Africans, who were here on the day of the first election—that great day in April 1994 when the election took place in South Africa. Colleagues might remember that three polling stations were set up in London, one of which was at Methodist Central hall, for the first-ever democratic election. These youngsters wanted to be the first people to vote in this first-ever free election, so they camped overnight on the steps of Methodist Central hall. There were lots of journalists outside and they went in to vote. As they came out, the journalists were asking, if I may say so, rather simplistic journalistic questions. They stopped a young girl and asked, “Didn’t you find it very complicated to choose who to vote for, given that long list of parties on the ballot paper?” There was a little pause and she said to the journalist, “I didn’t find it complicated at all. We’ve had a lot of time to think about it.” A young black guy, perhaps 18 or 19 years old, was asked, rather predictably, “What did you feel as you cast your vote?” He paused and then very wisely said, “I put a very big cross so that nobody could ignore my opinion.”

That liberation moment, when those people queued to vote in that first election, that transformational moment, was Mandela’s doing. It was no accident that he was able to deliver it, because he had worked and prepared for it during his time on Robben Island. He learnt to speak Afrikaans fluently in order to engage not only with his jailers, but with people in the Government. He went out of his way, even before his formal release, to meet people secretly.

That great moment when he walked on to the pitch at the rugby world cup final in 1995 also followed huge preparation. Mandela had met Francois Pienaar on many occasions and they had become close friends. We remember his wonderful comments when he commended Francois Pienaar and the Springbok team, which I believe had only one non-white player in the squad, while wearing the Springbok jersey. Francois Pienaar said, “We are playing this game for you, Mr President, not only for South Africa.” The crowd, which was almost entirely white, chanted “Mandela, Mandela, Mandela” from the stands as South Africa went on to win. For those Members who are interested in sport, I recommend a wonderful book by John Carlin, “Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation”, which tracks the history of that rugby world cup tournament up to that moment. It is inspirational reading.

I had the huge privilege of being back in South Africa earlier this year. I was met by Helen Zille, Premier of the Western Cape, who kindly accommodated me in what had been the district administrator’s residence. I did not know it until I went into the house, but the room I was given to sleep in was the room in which Mandela had slept the night before his presidential inauguration—it is now called the Madiba room. I texted family members and friends back home to share my excitement. One replied, “He was a great man, and I assume somebody’s changed the sheets since then.” But as I sat at the desk from which he composed his Cabinet and looked out over Table Mountain, it was only then that the significance of the transformation he had brought about in politics in South Africa completely dawned on me.

I associate myself closely with the comments of the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett). Mandela was a political leader of a political party of a political movement across a continent, and it was in that role that he stood for office and was returned as the first democratically elected South African President. Hugely to his credit, he did not cling to office. He served only one term before handing over to the next generation, to Thabo Mbeki and others. A little like the father of the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), Tony Benn, who said when he left this place that he was going to do politics outside, Mandela went on to do wonderful leadership work—for example, in campaigning against HIV/AIDS.

I hope that Mandela’s legacy reminds everybody not only of the great example of people such as Trevor Huddleston and the wonderful inspiration of places such as St Martin-in-the-Fields, which campaigned against apartheid for many years and hosted all those who were not allowed into the South African embassy when they protested in Trafalgar square, but of the others in public life who always argued for the principled position. He proved that politicians can change the world, and even that lawyers who are politicians can do really important things.

I think that the courage, dignity and discipline that Mandela showed had another lasting legacy that colleagues, including the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), have alluded to: he made us realise that we all have a mutual responsibility for each other across the world. There is so much injustice, discrimination, poverty and inequality, including in South Africa, still to fight. I hope that he will inspire the people of South Africa, all its leaders and all its parties, to rise to the challenge and the rest of the world never to stand by for so long when such oppression goes on, to such disadvantage to so many. The most commonly heard phrase today has been, “We will never see his like again”, but we will do him a disservice if we do not use that inspiration in our own lives and in our politics.