Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Greatness is not something that someone is born with. People come to greatness through many methods. Nelson Mandela certainly had some of the aspects of greatness from early on. He had great physical height, at six feet four, and he had a ferocious intellect, but unlike another great person who also came from South Africa—there must be something in the water!—Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela's genesis was not always peaceful. I think that we are ignoring his greatness if we seek to airbrush the history that was Nelson Mandela and not recognise the struggles that he faced to reach the position he achieved in the last few decades of his life.

It has been documented, of course, that Nelson Mandela was found guilty of treason at, among other things, a treason trial. There is discussion about that trial having been unfair and unjust. There were international reporters at the time who disagreed very much with the South African government, but they did feel that it was a fair trial. After all, Mandela did form Umkhonto we Sizwe, which is translated as Spear of the Nation. It was very clearly focused on violence. He advocated and formed Spear of the Nation with Walter Sisulu and Joe Slovo. Joe Slovo was a communist in South Africa at the time. In fact, it has latterly come to light that Nelson Mandela was a communist as well. He formed Spear of the Nation and was inspired by Fidel Castro. Initially his view of Spear of the Nation was that there should be sabotage alone and that there should not be any violence aimed at people or, indeed, any killing of people. He also said that, if that did not work, Spear of the Nation could resort to guerrilla war and terrorism. That is the person that Nelson Mandela was in the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, Spear of the Nation on Dingaan's Day in 1961 carried out 57 bombings in South Africa.

At the Rivonia trial Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for life. My father was a reporter with the Star newspaper at the time. He was not at the Rivonia trial, but he certainly was at the trial of Robert Sobukwe. I recall how he told me that Robert Sobukwe was a man of incredible intellect and great charm. My father was absolutely disgusted during the trial with the way that Robert Sobukwe was treated by the people that were guarding him, given that they did not have much in the way of thought about the country or anything else. They treated him as if he were subhuman simply because he was black.

I remember in 1978 going to my grandmother's place. Across the road there were some blacks, who had been drinking a bit and who were a bit rowdy, but they were not really causing a problem. They were just making a noise. I recall the police going there and beating them with shamboks and kicking them with their boots. I shouted out, 'Police brutality!' and fortunately they stopped. I think I got lucky that day, because I am glad to say that I was not thrown into prison. At that time I was not a Mandela supporter. I recall the Free Mandela campaign when I had an abortive year of engineering at Wits University. All I had to go on was what was written about him from the fifties and sixties. As I said, that was not something I agreed with. In fact, I supported the then official opposition, the Progressive Federal Party, which ironically with a name change is now the official opposition in South Africa, the Democratic Alliance. I recall chatting to people like Helen Suzman.

Mandela used his time in prison to think very deeply. He had spoken about it subsequently, saying that, when he gave up public life towards the end of his life, what he really missed about prison was the time to read and reflect. He clearly read and reflected a lot while he was in prison.

There are people in this place reflecting and speaking about sanctions having been the major factor in the South African apartheid regime coming to the conclusion that apartheid was not sustainable and that they had to change. I have to say it is a lack of understanding of the Afrikaner mindset. Remember, the Afrikaners are people that fought two Anglo-Boer wars. In the Second Anglo-Boer War, they were militarily defeated within one year but they continued for another two years with guerrilla warfare, despite their farms being burned and their children and wives being interned in concentration camps by the British. These are stubborn people and, when you push them with something like sanctions, to a certain extent they get their backs up even more.

The thing that precipitated a whole lot of things was actually the fall of the Berlin Wall. I can tell you that I remember from my childhood in South Africa that there was a communist seen behind every bush by the regime. They were absolutely paranoid about the 'kommunis gevaar'—the communist danger. The simple fact is that they saw communism as something that was the real evil, and they saw the Soviet Union as this all-encompassing power. It would have shocked them greatly to see the collapse of the Berlin Wall. In their view there was this incredibly powerful empire, the Soviet empire, which collapsed, and it would have made them realise: 'My God! We cannot actually hold the situation down in our own country.'

As a counterpoint to that, the other aspect of the Berlin Wall is that it precipitated a change in the views of Nelson Mandela as well, in that Nelson Mandela came to realise that communism and nationalisation of state assets were not the way of the future. Therefore, when he came to power, he did not nationalise anything, despite the fact that in his previous life—in the fifties and sixties and, indeed, going to 1989—he was very much of the communist view. So he was remarkable because, despite deep internal hurt and anger at what had happened to him over 27 years—some would say wasted years, but they were clearly not wasted with this man; he gave a lot of thought to what he did—he came out incredibly forgiving. There were people who had precipitated all sorts of things against him, yet he came out forgiving where he could have come out, quite frankly, like Winnie Mandela. What a different South Africa that would have been if he had come out resentful like Winnie.

What he did was that he healed the nation. He brought black and white together. Who can forget those images of the Rugby World Cup—believe me, I wish I could forget that first match between the Springboks and the Wallabies, where the Wallabies were trounced, but anyway—with Mandela in the rugby jersey talking about the rainbow nation, despite the fact that the Springboks in the apartheid regime were hated because the Springboks and rugby are very much an Afrikaner sport and an Afrikaner team. So the true greatness of Mandela is that he moved from a position in the 1950s and 1960s to the position he had in the last few decades of his life, of a peacemaker rather than a warmaker, of someone who was working at bringing people together.

Another thing that he did that was truly great in the African perspective—because until then it was almost unprecedented—was that he retired from office. He could have been President for life if he had wanted to be. The problem with most of Africa is that you get despots who cling to power for dear life. One need only look a little bit further north to Zimbabwe to see that with Robert Mugabe. So that was an admirable lesson that he gave not only to Africa but to the world. I would like to finish by saying that, if there is anything that Mandela taught us, it is that we should all strive to be our own better angels.

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