Page 3697 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 17 October 1990
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That he is a fervent nationalist cannot be denied but of his supposed communism either now or in the past we found no trace.
In that respect, we clearly differ from the Government which has resorted to the most dubious of methods to denigrate his reputation. Any suggestion that a communist influence or involvement in Mr Mandela's past means that we should be reticent about giving him full support is, as I say, absurd and abhorrent.
Mr Speaker, through Mr Duby's comments we heard another objection which equally needs to be put to rest, and that is that Mr Mandela has in the past said, and continues to say, that violence can be an acceptable method of dealing with oppression. As I said, for those of us who live in a democratic regime, with democratic institutions and courts of law, violence is abhorrent. For anyone to advocate violence in our society as a means of settling political differences is clearly abhorrent. But many are not so fortunate. The clearest statement that I can think of, which justifies the use of violence when faced with an oppressive regime, is in one of the classics of Western democratic political rhetoric, the Declaration of Independence. The words of Thomas Jefferson in the preface are:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, ...
It goes on to say that, when government fails to live up to those objects it is the people's right, their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security.
Mr Speaker, the Western democratic liberal tradition, with which we are fortunate to live, has always acknowledged that when a government is unjust and oppressive, when the basic rights of the citizens are not respected, it is the right of the citizenry to rise up against that government. To say otherwise is to deny the very heritage of our liberty. It is to deny the words of Thomas Jefferson; it is to brand George Washington a traitor; it is to brand Locke, Hulme, Rousseau and those other thinkers of the Enlightenment again as advocates of violence.
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