Motion of Condolence (Nelson Mandela)
The next item of business is a motion of condolence, in the name of Alex Salmond, following the death of Nelson Mandela. I inform members that I have instructed that the Parliament’s flags be flown at half-mast today. They will again fly at half-mast on the day of Nelson Mandela’s funeral. Following agreement with the South African honorary consul, we have made a book of condolence available for the public, members and staff to sign in the main hall.
14:10
I will have great pleasure in moving the motion, which I know will be supported by every member in the Parliament.
In 1875, less than a mile from the Parliament, William Henley wrote a poem called “Invictus” while he was being treated for tuberculosis in the old Edinburgh royal infirmary. Several generations later, 6,000 miles from here, it spoke directly to Nelson Mandela when he was in prison on Robben Island:
“I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul ...
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”
In recent days, the entire world has given thanks for the “unconquerable soul” of Nelson Mandela and it is therefore entirely fitting that this Parliament should mark his passing in this fashion. He was a towering political leader, the greatest statesman of his generation. He was an inspiration to countless millions around the world. This afternoon, I want to reflect briefly on three of the visits that he made to these islands.
I met President Mandela only once, but I almost met him as a young politician in 1990 when, along with, if I remember correctly, Gavin Strang, George Foulkes and Jim Sillars, I was inveigled into presenting the hands-off-Hibs petition in Downing Street. When we arrived at the steps in Downing Street, there was an extraordinary hullabaloo of cameras and television cameras, the like of which I had never seen. I had no idea that the hands-off-Hibs petition had generated such interest.
Then we were told that Nelson Mandela was meeting Margaret Thatcher and that the meeting had run over by well over an hour. The press were passing their time with the hands-off-Hibs petition. In a moment of inspiration, I said to the assembled press corps that Nelson Mandela was supporting the hands-off-Hibs campaign. We loitered for a time hoping to meet the great man on his way out of Downing Street but, as we were ushered back up Downing Street, the press corps broke into a chant of “Free Mandela!”, suggesting that after 27 years of incarceration on Robben Island he was now captured in Downing Street by Margaret Thatcher. When we got back to the gates at the entrance to Downing Street, the African National Congress supporters there started chanting “Hands off Hibs!” Both campaigns were successful.
The second visit was three years later, in 1993. As has been well documented over the past few days, and rightly so, Glasgow was the first city anywhere in the world to award Nelson Mandela freedom of the city. It was followed by many other cities around the globe and in Scotland, of course, by Aberdeen, Dundee and our capital city of Edinburgh, and by Midlothian Council. In 1982, Michael Kelly, the Lord Provost of Glasgow, launched a declaration arguing for Nelson Mandela’s release. That declaration went on to gain support from 2,500 civic leaders from 56 countries around the world. Famously, in 1986, St George’s Place in Glasgow, then home to the South African consulate, was renamed Nelson Mandela Place. In 1993, when Nelson Mandela was able to accept the freedom of Glasgow in person, he remembered and said how much that gesture had meant to him. He said:
“While we were physically denied our freedom in the country of our birth, a city 6,000 miles away, and as renowned as Glasgow, refused to accept the legitimacy of the apartheid system and declared us to be free.”
The place that Glasgow in particular and Scotland more widely earned in Nelson Mandela’s heart has been much commented on in recent days; it is something of which this nation can be justifiably proud.
The third visit that I want to reflect on was in 1996 when President Mandela give an address in Westminster Hall to both houses of the United Kingdom Parliament. It was a much anticipated address and he certainly did not disappoint. He said that unity and reconciliation would be the first founding stone of the new South Africa. Of course, unity and reconciliation shone through in all of Nelson Mandela’s actions—in his refusal to look for vengeance, in his understanding that forgiveness was essential to South Africa’s future and, perhaps most of all, in the empathy that he showed to his former oppressors. He invited his prison warder to his inauguration, he asked his prosecutor to lunch and he travelled to the home of Betsie Verwoerd, the widow of the South African president at the time of his own trial and imprisonment.
Those acts of grace, empathy and forgiveness helped to make South Africa’s transition to democracy possible. They are the greatest examples of true statesmanship of our times. Perhaps the handshake today in the First National Bank stadium between the President of the United States and the President of Cuba is an indication that that empathy, forgiveness and reconciliation continues after death, in terms of the effect that Mandela is having.
At the end of his trial in 1964, Mandela made one of the most admired speeches of the last century. He said:
“I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
Nelson Mandela did not die for that ideal. He lived for it, and he achieved it more successfully than anyone could possibly have imagined. In doing so, he provided an example to people across the planet. He encouraged us all to live up to our better natures, and he inspired us to continue to work for the day when, in the words that resounded around this Parliament when it was opened,
“Man to Man, the warld o’er,
Shall brothers be for a’ that.”
Today, this Parliament extends our condolences to the great man’s family and to the people of South Africa. The world is much poorer for his passing, but much, much richer for his life.
I move,
That the Parliament records its sadness at the passing on 5 December 2013 of Nelson Mandela; celebrates the inspirational life of a prisoner who became president; recognises Nelson Mandela’s role in the peaceful development of the modern South African nation and immense contribution to conflict resolution as a world statesman; celebrates his longstanding friendship with Scotland, and extends its deepest condolences and solidarity to Mr Mandela’s family and the people of South Africa at this time.
14:16
I am grateful for the opportunity on behalf of the Labour Party to support the motion of condolence on the passing of Nelson Mandela. I concur with everything that the First Minister said.
I am all too aware that, given the capacity of Nelson Mandela, his energy, compassion and courage, and the forgiveness embodied in him, this is a life so immense that words can barely capture the character of the man or do him justice.
As I was travelling through the centre of Glasgow today to get the train, I was reflecting on what I might say. I spotted flowers in abundance laid across the pavement, and I realised that they were there to mark the passing of Nelson Mandela. They were in the place, right at the very heart of Glasgow, that was named after him when he was given the freedom of the city.
I am proud that Glasgow was the first city in the world to convey this freedom upon a man who was imprisoned because of his belief in equality and justice—a belief for which he was prepared to die. I recognise that, as the First Minister said, other cities such as Aberdeen followed. It was, of course, more than a gesture. Mandela spoke of the impact of the news on those in jail. It was an act of solidarity that gave them succour and told them that the world outside supported them.
It was solidarity, but it was also a rebuke to the apartheid regime, both symbolically and in a practical way. In a perhaps typically Glaswegian approach, the creation of Nelson Mandela Place did not just involve renaming a street; of course, it was the street that housed the South African embassy, which meant that correspondence to the embassy had to be delivered in the name of the man who symbolised the world’s abhorrence of the apartheid regime that it defended. Indeed, I recall that postal workers would not deliver correspondence to the embassy if it was not properly addressed, which led eventually to the embassy being forced to get a post office box number to avoid the problem. All of that, of course, highlighted the increasing absurdity and isolation of its position.
It took courage. There were those who spoke out and asked for action. It is important to reflect that the struggle against apartheid took leadership and the immense courage of those who were at the heart of the suffering, but it also took individual decisions to choose humanity, often in countries, such as Scotland, where there were family connections to South Africa. People acting in small ways right across Scotland and the United Kingdom led to international consequences. That involved people far beyond politicians, with Brian Filling, who we have seen this week, the churches, people of compassion and the trade unionists all coming together to reject the regime and its brutality.
There are many examples over the years of people choosing the world that they wanted and fighting for it—people such as Bob Hughes, who led the Anti-Apartheid Movement at a UK level for many years. Of course, there is a strong tradition of solidarity in Scotland.
Another example, which is perhaps not remembered so well, is the rectorial campaign at the University of Glasgow in 1962, which transferred a student election into an election that had an international impact. Students across parties supported Albert Luthuli, who was elected in his absence—a man who was awarded the Nobel peace prize for his struggle against apartheid. He was prominent in the ANC and could not leave his country to take on the rectorial duties, but the message of solidarity, even at that time, ran very strong.
I am proud that our own Donald Dewar was part of that campaign and that a Luthuli scholarship still exists. Indeed, in the 1970s, a fellow student of mine on our politics course had come from South Africa to study because of the benefit of that scholarship. He was a bright young man who still could not vote in his own country and would not have a vote for many years to come.
There was solidarity and there was a campaign, but it was not a campaign that those involved believed could easily be won. We remembered Soweto and the death of Steve Biko. I vividly remember standing in protest with many others in 1979 outside the South African embassy, pleading for clemency for Solomon Mahlangu, who was to be executed, and the absolute sadness when we realised that international pleading had failed and he had been killed.
It seemed overwhelming and impossible that change might come. When it did and Nelson Mandela walked from jail tall, smiling, dignified and unbroken, how many across the world found hope again—a belief that change might be possible—because of that man and the individual decisions to boycott, support sanctions and challenge investments in South Africa? All of us could tell that that work could make a difference and that there was a point in politics and campaigning.
Surely the awe in which we hold him is magnified by the way in which he responded. He sought to heal his country and unify through peace and reconciliation. We look now and say how right that was, but it was not an easy option or route to take.
In the past few days, I am sure that many members have, like me, watched on television the lessons and message of Nelson Mandela. One image struck me like a physical pain. The truth and reconciliation process was being looked at. People spoke of their loss and suffering, confronted their tormentors, and their tormentors confronted their past. Archbishop Tutu had his head on a desk weeping, overwhelmed by the pain that truth and reconciliation bring.
The man whom we mourn today for his courage and towering ability was dignified, but not a man who stood on his dignity. With his humanity, warmth and smile, he spoke to us, and he was of us. That makes his suffering over 27 years and his survival of it all the more remarkable.
I recall when Nelson Mandela came to Glasgow to receive the freedom of the city. He came to George Square, and I recall the joy when he addressed us and then could not resist moving to the music. The folk singer Ian Davison wrote a song that captures that moment and told us that Nelson Mandela was not an ordinary leader, but one who could dance, too. He wrote:
“We’d sung about him for years,
And there were speeches everywhere.
But I’ll never forget the cheers,
When Mandela danced in the square.”
We remember Nelson Mandela and seek to console and reach out to the family who lost him, who suffer most from his loss, and to the country that he so proudly served. He fought injustice when there seemed to be no chance of victory, but he fought, endured and won. When he won, he struggled as hard for peace as he had to defeat apartheid.
Nelson Mandela was the best of Africa. He was the best of humanity. He was the best of us all.
14:23
We view events, people and change through our own eyes, and our time and experiences are reflected in what we see. Nelson Mandela’s journey from prisoner to president, which was watched around the world, spanned the decades, and the years of that journey are clear in this chamber.
The First Minister and, to a greater extent, the leader of the Labour Party have talked about their memories of the apartheid struggle and how it impacted on their political consciousness and the politics and world view of those around them, but my memories are, by necessity, only of what came after.
When The Specials charted with “Free Nelson Mandela”, I was five. When the world watched the man walk free from prison, I was still at primary school. My political consciousness was not really formed until I was in my teens, and by then he was already president. By the time that I reached voting age, he was more than halfway through his term of office and had already indicated that he would step down. So I do not remember the struggle. For me and people of my age, it was something to be viewed almost in the rear-view mirror of modern history—as anachronistic and wrong as American segregation or communist rule across Europe.
My view of Mandela was of a man who was greatly wronged trying to heal his broken country and lead it from darkness into light. He said:
“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
On leaving prison, with more reason to hate than anyone, Mandela showed people how to love and how to forgive. Mandela taught the world that reconciliation was more powerful than retribution. Despite terrible provocation he never answered racism with racism; instead, he chose to build a rainbow nation. He lived his philosophy every day and sometimes at great personal cost.
It was only a number of years after the fall of apartheid that I started more fully to appreciate that the transition that occurred from oppression to equality under the rule of law was not an inevitability and not simply the right and proper or even the obvious way that things could have happened by natural political evolution; rather it was as a consequence of one man’s courage, conviction and conscience.
As a young reporter, I was invited to hear FW de Klerk speak at the University of St Andrews. It was only then, when I heard at first hand but from the opposite side the difficulties entrenched in their shared land, that I understood just how big a gap had been bridged: the pressure on Mandela from newly emancipated black South Africans to hit back at their oppressors for every wrong that they had endured; the moral courage required to stand up and show that there was another way—that truth could lead to reconciliation.
Mandela’s words
“to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others”
describe the simplest of concepts but the hardest of tasks, especially given that he had to work with leaders of an establishment that had taken a third of his life and subjected a whole people.
Back in those dark days of strife, turmoil and challenge, many struggled to understand the potency of what was unfolding, not least those in my party. I am pleased that the opening of the Thatcher archive shows that Margaret Thatcher lobbied PW Botha for Mandela’s release repeatedly and with vigour. She told him that such a move
“would have more impact than almost any single action you could undertake.”
That knowledge and the subsequent acknowledgement of the unique greatness that was Nelson Mandela does not change the fact that many members of my party did not recognise apartheid for the grave violation of human dignity that it was and did not back the struggle to end it. That is a stain on our party, and those members have found themselves on the wrong side of history. As someone who is a generation behind, it is almost incomprehensible to me how their judgment could have been so wrong.
Following his release, Nelson Mandela showed the world what could be achieved by offering a hand of friendship, shared endeavour, trust, forgiveness and love. His example gave hope not just to his country or his continent but to all people. Describing himself, he said:
“I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair.”
That action—that refusal to give in to rancour and the persistence to keep putting one foot in front of the other and to guide his nation in its journey from division to unity—increased everybody’s faith in humanity. All nations were represented at his memorial today because Mandela spoke not just for South Africa but to the world. His message of love, faith, forgiveness and human dignity made him a man not just for our time, but all time.
I support the motion.
14:28
Like so many others, I saw today’s remarkable scenes from Johannesburg, with presidents and prime ministers, archbishops and cardinals, and village choirs and children from Soweto gathered in one place.
Nelson Mandela’s death was a moment that we all knew would come but, for most of our lives, we could only have dreamed that he would be able to pass on peacefully, in freedom and with the thanks of the world around him.
The vocation of politics to play a part in a changing world grew with me in the 1980s. At that time, we had the iron curtain in Europe, the cold war across the world and apartheid in South Africa. Then there was that brief, remarkable time, when Nelson Mandela was out of prison and president of South Africa; Václav Havel was out of prison and president of the Czech Republic; and Lech Walesa was president of Poland—three things that had seemed impossible just five years earlier. I can only imagine the impact on those individuals and on the people who had campaigned for decades.
First among those campaigners in the context of the Scottish Parliament was David Steel, who was a member of the Anti-Apartheid Movement—he became the movement’s president—from his first days in politics in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1986, when he was leader of the Liberal Party, he delivered the annual freedom speech at the University of Cape Town. He has written about that in the past few days, saying that the South African foreign minister, Pik Botha, refused him permission to visit Nelson Mandela and asked why the west was so obsessed with “this chap”. Within five years, he knew why. Nelson Mandela led a peaceful but fundamental change to democracy in South Africa.
We no longer hear the word “apartheid”, with all the evil, cruelty, division and injustice that was its true meaning and at the core of that rotten system. The world is a better place for that. Apartheid South Africa was almost alone in the world. We boycotted its goods and shunned its businesses and spokespeople. We can now be proud of the South African embassy in Trafalgar Square in London, but back then people went there only to protest about injustice and to demand Mandela’s freedom and an end to apartheid.
Mandela was a leader, a statesman and certainly an inspiration, but he suffered as a man. His daughter Makaziwe spoke yesterday, with something of her father’s uplifting manner, about how her father sought not just political but spiritual freedom. She spoke about how Mandela thought that if he did not forgive others he would remain imprisoned.
Such spiritual freedom has been a feature of these days of mourning. There have been personal stories of kindness. I was particularly moved by what Gordon Brown said on the radio a few days ago. He said that after his son was born he received a call, at home, from Nelson Mandela. It was not a routine call of congratulation but a call from a father to a father; an intimate call, from a parent who had lost a son to another who had lost a daughter—a human touch.
As Makaziwe reminded us, to her dad was given the strength that enabled him to be the champion of forgiveness and reconciliation. Mandela did not want the hurt that he had suffered to be part of anyone else’s life. Through his strength, he gave a future to the country of South Africa, which could so easily have failed. He also inspired reconciliation after other conflicts, not least in Northern Ireland, where many brave individuals have put their losses and tragedies behind them.
In captivity, Nelson Mandela inspired us with his struggle, and on his release he gave us hope across the world. Today, as we reflect on his life, he lifts us again, to work for a better world, where, as he said, we “close the circle” and
“herald the advent of a glorious summer of a partnership for freedom, peace, prosperity and friendship.”
14:33
Images that I saw at the age of 16, on a portable television that had a wire coat hanger for an aerial, made me feel that I was living in an age of profound hope for change and a better world. The first image was of people dancing on top of the Berlin wall and taking chunks out of it. The second was of Nelson Mandela walking from the prison gates and into the global spotlight, dignified and unbroken, as Johann Lamont rightly said.
The image that we saw was not of the young man who had been imprisoned but of a man in his 70s. It is rare that a leader has emerged to govern at such an age without having been compromised by the lifetime of political deals behind him. Perhaps that, as much as his innate qualities, made him the embodiment of hope.
Therefore, I felt the dismay that I felt at hearing of Nelson Mandela’s death last week not only because the man had died—all of us knew that that was expected; I felt it because he died in, and we still live in, a world in which hope is so hard to sustain. We look around and we still see the things that he fought against: poverty and inequality; war and conflict; prejudice and discrimination; and the exploitation of people and of the planet that we share. Brutality and injustice are still perpetrated in places such as Palestine, as they were in South Africa by the apartheid regime.
The tribute today in Johannesburg, which has been drenched in the rain as so many Glasgow demonstrations have been over the years, has been inspirational to see. It has reminded us of the capacity of human beings to progress and that, through a determination to do so, we can achieve, if not yet a decent world for all people, a better world.
Nelson Mandela has received praise from all quarters. He has been praised for the sense of justice that gave him the determination to oppose apartheid and economic injustice, and for having the humanity to forgive, in a spirit of truth and reconciliation, those who had perpetrated apartheid. Between those chapters, he also showed the courage to fight when the necessity became clear, and the resilience to survive and to show continued leadership through decades of brutal treatment and imprisonment at a time when so many around the world continued to treat the apartheid regime as a legitimate Government. Our respect and admiration for him should not be limited to his life as an elderly elder statesman. If he had not shown the courage to fight and the resilience to survive, would he have become the figure of such global significance that he became?
How can we learn from Nelson Mandela’s story and continue to change the world for the better? Consigning war, poverty, racism, injustice and exploitation to history might seem impossible. We will need the sense of justice, the courage, the resilience and the humanity that he showed if we are ever to be able to say, as he did:
“It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
[Applause.]