Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to support the motion and, with others in the Senate, to celebrate the life and pay tribute to the achievements of Nelson Mandela. He was a great leader, a freedom fighter and, of course, the President. The days since his death have shown how many people around the world have been inspired by his courage, by his commitment and by his personal sacrifice. His achievements are a testament to the power of resistance and grassroots engagement. As Aung San Suu Kyi has said:

He was a great human being who raised the standard of humanity. He stood for human rights and equality and he made us all understand that we can change the world.

As Senator Wong has just quoted:

What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.

Those words are the best way to sum up his life because he did make such a difference to the lives not only of people in South Africa but also of people throughout the world. He dedicated his life to ending the dispossession of black South Africans under apartheid.

We cannot truly reflect on his life without also confronting the history of apartheid in South Africa. When Nelson Mandela first joined the African National Congress in the 1940s, the organisation was regarded as a terrorist group, a label it would struggle against for decades. When the ANC was outlawed in the 1960s, he travelled throughout Europe and Africa to build support for the anti-apartheid movement. Shamefully, Mandela received little in the way of institutional support. When he returned to South Africa, he and other senior ANC figures were charged with sabotage in an effort to marginalise the anti-apartheid movement. At the 1964 trial, which found him guilty, he made a strong statement describing his vision for democracy in South Africa, and it was the statement from which Senator Abetz quoted earlier. He said at that time:

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 see realised. But, my lord, if needs be it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

People do not understand the context of those words. He was facing the death sentence when he stood up and said that. His lawyers told him not to, that it was too great a risk to stand up and say what he was fighting for, but he was prepared, as he said, to face the death sentence were that to occur. As happened, he was sentenced to life imprisonment and for 27 years he spent the best part of his life in prison, smashing rocks for a long part of that time. He was allowed a visitor once every six months. It is very hard for any of us to imagine for a moment what it would be like to live through that. We have to pay tribute to the Red Cross because during that time they visited consistently, as indeed they do for prisoners all over the world. Nelson Mandela said he always knew when they were coming because he was allowed out, not to work that day but to meet with them, and that they gave him some comfort and joy through that time.

Those words, which he spoke in the trial, were his last public words until he was released from prison on 11 February 1990. Like Senator Wong, I remember that day very well and watching on television when he first walked across what appeared, as I recall, to be a bridge. The reports of the day said that he was met with joy, with exhilaration and with apprehension. The apprehension goes to the very fact that how he responded at that time has determined the fate of South Africa. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu said:

Can you imagine what would have happened to us had Mandela emerged from prison in 1990 bristling with resentment at the gross miscarriage of justice that had occurred in the Rivonia Trial? Can you imagine where South Africa would be today had he been consumed by a lust for revenge, to want to pay back for all the humiliations and all the agony that he and his people had suffered at the hands of their white oppressors?

Instead, the world was amazed, indeed awed, by the unexpectedly peaceful transition of 1994, followed not by … revenge and retribution but by the wonder of forgiveness and reconciliation epitomized in the processes of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Desmond Tutu also said that Nelson Mandela was 'the undisputed icon of forgiveness and reconciliation. We thought enemies could become friends as we followed Madiba on the path of forgiveness and reconciliation.' That was an absolutely extraordinary thing that he was able to achieve. During the time he was in prison, work was going on around the world seeking an end to apartheid.

We in Australia can be quite proud of the actions taken by Prime Minister Fraser and by Prime Minister Hawke and I pay tribute to Bob Hawke's efforts with respect to his idea of divestment It was Bob Hawke who came up with the idea of going to the world's bankers, which were essentially holding up the South African economy, and getting them to actually act against apartheid and, in fact, one of the finance ministers in South Africa at that time said that that divestment campaign was the dagger that finally immobilised apartheid. So that is really a very significant contribution and when Nelson Mandela came to Australia, after he was released in 1990, he made that point while he was here, that one of the reasons he came was the role that Australians, and Bob Hawke in particular, had played in bringing an end to the apartheid regime.

But it is also worth remembering—as at the end of a long life people now stand and pay tribute to Nelson Mandela—how hard it was for him during those years and for the people who supported him and also the number of people who died in the struggle. It was a very strong and horrific struggle against the forces who were trying to bring an end to the apartheid regime. You only have to look at the response in the United Kingdom, where you had the youth wing of the Conservative Party bringing out their infamous Hang Mandela poster and you had Margaret Thatcher at the time saying that Mandela and his supporters were 'living in cloud cuckoo land in' for believing that he might lead South Africa someday. Ronald Reagan also fought against the international divestment effort and it is interesting that Nelson Mandela's name remained on the terrorist list, in terms of the Americans, and was not removed until 2005. So, looking back on his life, I note he certainly had every temptation to behave differently than he did in terms of forgiving his enemies and calling for truth and reconciliation and for a moving-on in South Africa.

As for my own experience, I never had the honour of meeting Nelson Mandela but I did have the enormous privilege of sitting in a room when Nelson Mandela addressed the World Parks Congress in 2004. He stood up there and said:

A sustainable future for humankind depends on a caring partnership with nature as much as anything else.

He made a very strong statement about his connections with the natural world. In that same speech he went on to talk about the importance of youth and he said:

Without the involvement of the youth, the future cannot be secured.

I am hoping that now, with his death and the enormous outpouring of love for him in South Africa and around the world, young South Africans will be inspired by his message of peace and reconciliation and forgiveness and will go on in the same manner in which he led them. He also said this statement, made outside the Australian Education Union offices, where he talked about education as 'being the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world'—and I know that is something that Nelson Mandela often talked about in South Africa with young South Africans. So, on behalf of the Australian Greens, I certainly want to convey our condolences and very best wishes and thoughts to Mr Mandela's family and to the people of South Africa but also to people around the world who are oppressed, to whom we say: never give up and be inspired by the life, courage and optimism of Nelson Mandela.