One Man's Terrorist....

There hasn't been a subject on the MB's that has so divided opinion since the last time the words Muslim or Islam were mentioned. The letters pages of the newspapers have been filled with all sorts of opinions as well, I can't remember the last time a statue so polarised the great British public.

A few examples:

"Mr Mandela may be an admirable man but why have got to raise a statue to a non Briton who has done nothing for this country in Parliament Square? This is an exercise in making our creepy Mayor of London look good."

"Ah yes, Nelson Mandela, such a distinguished Briton throughout his career. "

"Even though he has achieved great things there should not be a statue of Mr Mandela in London. I don't think he has done any great things for Britain. This just makes no sense to me. Please can someone attempt to explain why British tax payers money is being used to erect this statue?"

"There is no justification to have Mandela's statue in Westminster, Westminster should be kept for British politicians, and anyway there are better cases to be made for other foreign politicians, like Ghandi, at least he wasn't a terrorist like Mandela."

"To be fair, Mandela WAS leader of the MK - the militant wing of the ANC, but they only started what we would call true terrorism (deliberate targeting of civilians) well AFTER his arrest. Under his leadership, their tactics were more civil disobedience and sabotage of government facilities."

"And of course a good chance for self-righteous left-wingers to remind the working class white population what terrible, horrid, awful people they are!"

Back in the day when I was, sorry Gavin I'm going to have to use a label, a young Socialist, the release of Nelson Mandela and the ending of Apartheid was something worth fighting for. The fact that the country, where the population was 80% Black, 9% Coloured and 2% Asian, was controlled by a white population of under 10% seemed wrong, both morally and politically.

Long before Mrs Thatcher coined the phrase "self-determination," there was the English sense of fair play, that the minority could not or rather should not, impose a system that seemed to the outside world so devoid of any basic human rights. Big business saw it differently of course and companies and politicians got rich and powerful from dealing with the Apartheid regime despite trade embargoes under the Labour government of Harold Wilson, Mrs Thatcher openly encouraged trade with South Africa believing in what she called, "constructive engagement," - although funnily enough she also said that "we don't do deals with terrorists," obviously if you wear a suit and contribute funds to the Conservative Party whilst openly subjugating your population to a reign of terror, as the white South African regime did, that isn't state terrorism that's constructive engagement. Oh how the evenings must have flown by in Soweto as the inhabitants chortled about that!

Nelson Mandela had joined the African National Congress in 1944 and was engaged in resistance against the ruling National Party's apartheid policies after 1948. He went on trial for treason in 1956-1961 and was acquitted in 1961.After the banning of the ANC in 1960, Mandela argued for the setting up of a military wing within the ANC. In June 1961, the ANC executive considered his proposal on the use of violent tactics and agreed that those members who wished to involve themselves in Mandela's campaign would not be stopped from doing so by the ANC. This led to the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe. Mandela was arrested in 1962 and sentenced to five years' imprisonment with hard labour. In 1963, when many fellow leaders of the ANC and the Umkhonto we Sizwe were arrested, Mandela was brought to stand trial with them for plotting to overthrow the government by violence. His statement from the dock received considerable international publicity. On June 12, 1964, eight of the accused, including Mandela, were sentenced to life imprisonment. From 1964 to 1982, he was incarcerated at Robben Island Prison, off Cape Town; thereafter, he was at Pollsmoor Prison, nearby on the mainland.

In August 2006 David Cameron tried to distance himself further from the Thatcher regime by stating that: "Mandela was one of the greatest men alive" and said his overwhelming impression was "not how violent the armed struggle or Soweto uprisings were, but how restrained".

Of course this only served to enrage Thatcher's own buddy, Norman Tebbit who said in reply "Because of his age, Mr Cameron is looking at these events as part of history. Others of us who lived through them and had input into the discussions at the time see things very differently," he said. "The policy of the Thatcher government was a success."

Well seeing as several of Norman's cabinet colleagues did rather well financially out of Apartheid I'm not surprised he thinks it was a success, it's easier to feel life is going well when you have your boot pressed down on the head of the oppressed isn't it?

There is no denying that Nelson Mandela belonged to an organisation that carried out the most horrific acts imaginable on "innocent" civilians. In South Africa thousands of white civilians were killed during the 1980's, casualties of the liberation struggle of the ANC's militant wing Umkhonto we Sizwe - killed when bombs exploded in restaurants and in busy streets before military offices, or when landmines in the country's border regions exploded under farmers' trucks. Interestingly the American Government never once condemned the actions of the ANC, although I suspect that's because to do so would to condemn, in retrospect, the Civil Rights Movement's struggle for equality in the States. The point here is that Mandela wasn't actively involved in terrorism, he was in prison and when he had been a free man he had campaigned for active civil disobedience.

Mandela's release from prison on 11th February 1990 did little to ease the tension in South Africa that had grown during is absence. He had to face the reality that the spiral of violence that was taking place showed that he may have wielded more moral authority as the world's most famous prisoner. Whilst in jail, where he could not speak publicly or even have his picture published, Mandela was an ethereal inspiration to continued resistance against apartheid. To some South African blacks, however, Mandela out of prison has become an irrelevant figurehead, a dignified gentleman with utopian socialist ideas that have little to do with their daily lives. Mandela's calls for discipline in the urban black townships have been met by continuing terror from the young warlords who exert life-and-death power in those hopeless precincts. His appeal for children to return to school after a sporadic six-year boycott has been widely ignored. And his plea for the combatants in Natal to "take your guns, your knives and your pangas and throw them into the sea" was answered by even bloodier fighting in the rolling Zululand valleys.

Following his release from prison, Mandela returned to the leadership of the ANC and, between 1990 and 1994, led the party in the negotiations that would eventually result in the country's first multi-racial elections. In 1991, the ANC held its first national conference in South Africa after its unbanning, electing Mandela as President of the organisation. His old friend and colleague Oliver Tambo, who had led the organisation in exile during Mandela's imprisonment, became National Chairperson.

Mandela's leadership through the negotiations, as well as his relationship with President F.W. de Klerk, was recognised when they were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. However, the relationship was sometimes strained, particularly so in a sharp exchange in 1991 when he furiously referred to De Klerk as the head of "an illegitimate, discredited, minority regime".

The first truly democratic elections took place in South Africa in 1994 and Nelson Mandela, as leader of the ANC was inaugurated as the country's president on 10 May 1994 and I suppose for those of us who had hoped for a South African government that was representative of the make-up of its population it was a moment to savour as much as that Sunday morning, just four years earlier, when we had watched those pictures from South Africa as he walked free from the Victor Verster Prison.

South Africa's problems weren't going to go away with his incoming presidency however and his attitude towards HIV/AIDS shocked many of those who had regarded him as some sort of kindly old Grandad sitting back opening a packet of Werthers Originals whilst the blacks grasped their sudden access to power with both hands. Mandela later admitted that he had been wrong in not heeding the warnings about the spread of the disease throughout South Africa and he has probably done more to promote HIV awareness whilst retired then he ever did whilst he had power.

The legacy of those wasted years are a rate among those aged 2 years and older of 10.8% (2005), that people living with HIV/AIDS: 5,2 million (2006 est.) and that deaths due to AIDS: 336,000 (2006 est.). This in a country with a population of just under 44 million.

Mandela retired from the office of South African president in 1999. In 2003 CNN announced his death and earlier this year South African media organisations were tricked by a series of e-mails into believing that he had died, this despite the fact that he was on holiday in Mozambique at the time.

So was he a terrorist? I don't think so, not in the sense that the IRA or ETA are/were terrorists. Both the IRA and ETA already had access to democracy, the majority of South Africans did not and banning their only representatives back in 1960 was as cynical as it gets. Mandela belonged to an organisation that at the time of his imprisonment was engaged in civil disobedience. Should we erect statues in England of foreign nationals? Well why not, look around Westminster, there are celebrations of the lives of Abraham Lincoln, Jan Smuts and the Burghars of Calais - and why can't we get away from this Little Englander mentality and actually celebrate a man's achievements regardless of race, creed or colour. Do we need another statue of Nelson Mandela, just a short walk from the last one - I don't think so.