Hague Kevin: Obituaries — Nelson MandelaText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHague Kevin: Obituaries — Nelson Mandela[Sitting date: 10 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15340. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEVIN HAGUE (Green): Nelson Mandela was not as some of the comments of the past several days would have us believe some anodynetwinkly-eyed grandfather. He was a gracious man considerate to all those he interacted with possessing a disarming sense of humour. He understood that breaking the cycle of retribution required honesty in order to reconcile for the good of future generations. But under the velvet there was steel. Nelson Mandela was a freedom fighter a man of great courage determination and uncompromising integrity. The apartheid regime was not merely racist and repressive; it was evil and murderous and it survived only through domestic barbarism and through the support of Western Governments including shamefully our own—sometimes particularly our own.The South African regime of the early 1960s understood all too well the power of Nelson Mandela as a leader of the struggle against it and it sought to crush this potencyentirely. It imprisoned him on an island and tried to completely suppress all images of him let alone anything he said or wrote. Yet in the act of this attempted burial it made him more powerful than it could possibly have imagined. Nelson Mandela became the symbol that united the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and across the world. The apartheid regime imprisoned a man for 18 months for having the words “Release Nelson Mandela” on his tea mug at work but those words—that call—would become the clarion call for the entire world. This is a coffee cup that HART—Halt All Racist Tours—produced and we sold quite a few copies. It actually has a picture of Nelson Mandela on it. It is the last picture that we had at that time. It was taken in I think probably 1964 before he was imprisoned and it was a shock to see an old man walk fromPollsmoor Prison robbed of 27 years of his life. He rescued his country from spiralling into civil war and then set about forging a new nation based on the ideal of it being a place where everyone belongs—a rainbow nation. That ideal had been one to which Nelson Mandela dedicated his life and as he said it was one for which he was prepared to die if need be.That ideal is not yet realised and others must take up his burden more convincingly than some of his successors have done. In the year 2000 I was present at the closing ceremony of the International AIDS Conference in Durban. It had been a fraught conference dominated byThabo Mbeki’s denial of access to anti-HIV treatments based on his misplaced idea that HIV was not the cause of AIDS. Nelson Mandela used his speaking slot at the closing ceremony to comprehensively rebut Mbeki’s position and to skilfully unite the conference in a position on access to treatments that has saved many many lives. The other occasion when I had the privilege of seeing him in person was at a gathering of some from the anti-apartheid movement in St Matthews-in-the-City in 1995. Nelson Mandela had sought the opportunity to specifically thank the anti-apartheid movement in this country for our support and contribution in bringing justice to South Africa.If anything binds this country to Nelson Mandela and to his legacy it is the work of the anti-apartheid movement. I know that a number of members of this House took action to oppose apartheid and literally hundreds of thousands of other New Zealanders did the same. We took that action in defiance of our Government of the day which tacitly supported and lent comfort to the apartheid regime. Very often we took that action in defiance of the law believing that we served a greater good and I am proud of those actions. Now today I stand here not only on behalf of the Green Party but with a sense of those hundreds of thousands standing with me shoulder to shoulder arms linked to wish you well Nelson Mandela on your voyage to the stars. Nelson Mandela we fought for your freedom from the other side of the world and now we mourn you from here. We celebrate your life and we vow to keep alive your belief in redemption truth and reconciliation and good lives and a fair future for everyone.