The date was June 1996, just two years into his presidency.
The place was the Palace of Westminster in London.
Nelson Mandela was on a state visit to the UK, accompanied by our own Kader and Louise Asmal, the founders of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement.
As he walked into the chamber, Mandela perhaps glanced over the assembled Lords and Commons.
He would have seen some who had been steadfast allies and friends of the anti-apartheid cause for decades.
Others had been bitter enemies of the cause and had reviled him and his friends personally.
They had resisted sanctions, had sold arms to the hated regime and offered it diplomatic cover.
In the front row was Margaret Thatcher, the person who had declared that anyone who believed the ANC was ever going to form the Government of South Africa was “living in cloud cuckoo land”.
Mandela would have been forgiven if he dwelled on past insults and had crowed a bit about his triumphs.
But Nelson Mandela was not like that.
He was there to focus on the future, to invite trade and investment.
He was there to give a progress report on the reforms he had pioneered to overcome the legacy of apartheid - the multi-racial cabinet, the liberal constitution, the multi-party democracy, the million homes under construction, the schools and clinics, and the massive programme to deliver clean water under Kader’s management.
It was that generosity of forgiveness that had endeared him to millions throughout the globe and will continue to inspire millions more long after his death.
That generosity of spirit would come as no surprise to those who had been present when Mandela addressed the Oireachtas in 1990, not long after his release.
On that occasion, he had quoted from William Butler Yeats – a favourite line of Kader’s - that “too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart”.
But Mandela told the Oireachtas that vengeance – resolving to meet brutality with brutality - was the wrong approach.
He said:
“We understood that to emulate the barbarity of the tyrant would also transform us into savages… We had to refuse that our long sacrifice should make a stone of our hearts.”
And so they did.
During this past week, Mandela’s moral impact has again been clear for all to see.
As Barack Obama said of Mandela: “He speaks to what’s best inside us.”
Mandela faced immense turbulence in his life.
But he handled it with stubborn strength and composure– the active struggle, the decades of imprisonment, the years of patient negotiation, the hard slog of office and then the never-ending calls on him during the years that he might reasonably have reserved for quiet retirement but instead devoted to peace –making and tireless campaigning for global justice.
Tonight, we celebrate a wonderful and inspirational life, and in doing so, we might pause to reflect on how his triumphs were achieved.
I think it’s fair to say that few of us genuinely thought that the hated apartheid system would ever end in our lifetimes.
But Nelson Mandela thought differently, and through his courage and conviction, the tyrannical system was brought crashing down.
As someone who was both a longstanding member and honorary secretary of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement, and who lived in Africa for several years, I saw up close both the struggle to free South Africa and the solidarity shown by campaigners across the world.
I lived in Tanzania in the early to mid-1980s.
Tanzania then was the home from home for so many ANC exiles and I was privileged to get to know some of them, including the late Marius Schoon, who was working at the ANC Freedom College called SOMAFCO in Mazimbu, Central Tanzania.
It was a time of some considerable apprehension amongst those exiles because the apartheid regime’s military might was strengthening – a development which, superficially at least, appeared to guarantee its indefinite continuance.
Despite this military might, however, the apartheid system’s fundamental weaknesses were being exposed to the world.
The continued imprisonment on Robben Island of Mandela, Walter Sisulu and others was provoking intense international anger.
It was the time when the call to boycott apartheid was being heard all over the world.
Companies had to choose between active disinvestment or a consumer boycott, while even the US Congress was moving towards a comprehensive sanctions policy.
Films such as “Cry Freedom” and “A World Apart” were filling cinemas and telling the world the stories of Donald Woods, Joe Slovo and Ruth First.
Eventually, even the regime’s military superiority came under threat as it was unable to overcome or contain the freedom struggles in neighbouring countries like Namibia that threatened to surround South Africa with ANC-friendly states.
All these separate components came together in one massive campaign to secure the release of Nelson Mandela and the political recognition of the ANC within South Africa.
It was a powerful demonstration of how a mass movement could overcome the entrenched power of a dictatorial system.
Nelson Mandela might justifiably have regarded his release from prison in 1990 as the end of his contribution to the freedom struggle.
In fact, it was only the start of a new phase.
The four years to the election in April 1994 were a time of immense difficulties.
On the one hand, he travelled extensively and was received everywhere with adulation.
On the other, he had to engage intensively with the protracted negotiations for a new constitutional settlement and free elections while assuring the white population of their security and role in the new South Africa.
None of these were easy tasks, far from it.
Nelson Mandela’s approach to these obstacles was built on two foundations: one political, one personal.
His political approach was based on the principles of the Freedom Charter which was, to him and to the ANC, the equivalent of the US Declaration of Independence.
This Charter, adopted in 1955 at Kliptown, set out in bold unequivocal terms what he and his colleagues wanted to achieve.
The first clause of this charter is stark and simple:
WE, THE PEOPLE OF SOUTH AFRICA, declare for all our country and the world to know:
that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white,
and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people.
Principles are one thing; the personal negotiating skills involved in delivering results which uphold them are quite another.
This was Nelson Mandela’s second pillar of strength.
He displayed consummate negotiating skills, combining patience and a shrewd eye for political advantage.
In his memoir, Kader Asmal mentioned that Mandela had been a renowned boxer in his youth.
“In his political sparring, thrusting and counter-thrusting, feinting and then going for the hammer blow, he reminded me of what the young Mandela must have been like in the ring: A wily and dangerous adversary.”
Mandela was at his best in those months after he became President and had to build a Government of National Unity, Reconstruction and Development.
This is not to say his time in office was entirely smooth sailing – because it wasn’t.
He inherited massive expectations that democracy would bring instant results.
That, of course, was impossible in a short time but there were many substantial achievements.
His decision to stand aside after one term was itself a powerful gesture and a superb political legacy for the whole of Africa.
When he left office, he embarked on many development and peace initiatives.
In concluding, I would like to mention one.
In 1999, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania died while engaged as a peace mediator in Burundi to prevent the conflict in that country reaching the scale of the genocide in neighbouring Rwanda.
Mandela was the only person who had the stature to take up the Nyerere task, and he did this with immense patience and kept at it for, I think, for close to three years till he achieved a peace accord.
As he once famously said: “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
Finally, may I say I am delighted that some of the Dunnes Stores strikers of 1985 were able to travel to the funeral this week.
They were there because it was their place to be there .
I commend the unions who assisted them in making the journey and the employers who gave them leave to do so.
And I’d like to salute tonight all those Irish friends of South Africa, ranging from the many missionaries and organisations such as Trocaire to and wider trade union movement, who took Mandela’s side and waged the fight against apartheid.
Thank you.
ENDS