Friendship with Nelson Mandela, instructions for use | The Press

Nelson Mandela had barely left the infamous Robben Island prison, where he spent 27 years, when he picked up the phone to call Brian Mulroney on February 12, 1990. One of his first calls as a free man.

“He had heard that a young Prime Minister of Canada had made his cause a government priority, he had followed from afar [nos actions] all these years and he appreciated what we had done,” said Brian Mulroney in an interview with the CBC on the sidelines of the funeral of the first president of post-apartheid South Africa in 2013.

Nelson Mandela also expressed the wish that the Canadian House of Commons would be the first foreign legislature where he would deliver a speech. And he didn’t drag his feet. Despite the difficult period of transition his country was going through, the South African leader arrived in Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto barely four months after his release from prison to thank Canadians for their support, but more particularly to greet the first conservative minister.

This visit sealed the start of a friendship between the two men.

A friendship built on the simple fact that Brian Mulroney had the courage to place himself on the right side of History when it was not obvious.

At a time when the political cost might seem high.

We learned in his memoirs that Brian Mulroney acquired his dislike for the apartheid regime very early in his life. Particularly with Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, who, in 1961, had achieved a brilliant coup against the apartheid regime during a Commonwealth meeting. The Canadian politician had asked South Africa to abandon the apartheid regime which allowed the white minority to enslave the black majority or to withdraw its application for membership. The racist government chose the second option. Diefenbaker returned to Canada as a hero.

This small victory did not lead to a sustained campaign in Canada against the apartheid regime, noted Linda Freeman, professor of political science at Carleton University, in her book The Ambiguous Champion (“The Ambiguous Champion”). At best, much of the Canadian position was lukewarm, she argues.

Brian Mulroney was an exception. When he came to power in 1984, he made the fight against apartheid Canada’s foreign affairs priority, even though his position was not unanimous in his party or within the bureaucracy of the Ministry of External Affairs of the time.

Several federal officials feared harming Canadian companies doing business with South Africa.

Despite the resistance he faced, Brian Mulroney delivered a head-turning anti-apartheid speech at the opening of the United Nations General Assembly in 1985.

In the years that followed, Brian Mulroney, who believed in imposing sanctions to weaken the South African regime, was also not afraid to argue over the issue with two of his main allies on the issue. international scene, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and American President Ronald Reagan.

And he persisted and signed. In 1988, back before the United Nations, he launched one of his most powerful attacks against the system of racial segregation¹. “Mr. President, the movement for human dignity is irreversible. There is no longer any doubt that fundamental changes are coming to South Africa. The only question is how, when and at what cost to human life. We must ensure that the answers are “soon” and “peacefully” and that a framework is maintained so that a non-racist and democratic South Africa can emerge. Only then will Mandela’s children know the gifts of freedom,” the Canadian prime minister said in the most emotional part of the call to action now being studied in universities.

The apartheid regime began its dismantling the following year.

Today, there is no doubt that Brian Mulroney was part of the driving forces that led to this historic outcome.

That said, the Canadian prime minister did not go it alone, recalls Richard Poplak, a South African journalist and author who grew up during the time of apartheid and who immigrated to Canada in 1989. Among Western countries, Sweden and Norway also played a central role, he notes. “But it is clear that Brian Mulroney stood by his principles on the issue of apartheid. He did what he had to do,” he told me in a telephone interview.

As a child, he never heard of the Conservative Prime Minister’s struggle. “During apartheid, the press was completely censored,” he says. And today ? “It is little mentioned in South Africa because the current leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) have power over the version of the story that is told. And that they give more space to the role of the ANC and its Eastern allies, such as China and Russia. But there will come a day when South Africa will have to reconcile itself with its history,” believes the man who shares his life between Montreal and Johannesburg, and his pen between DailyMaverick and the Globe and Mail, to name just a few. “On the other hand, Nelson Mandela and the first generation of the ANC were very aware of the principles he defended. »

Hence the friendship. Hence a gold medal in the name of Oliver Tambo, another founder of the ANC, which Mr. Mulroney received from the South African government in 2015.

And what will we remember? The moment seems particularly well chosen to remember this part of the life of the former prime minister. And not only because he has just left us at the age of 84 and it is appropriate to salute the most significant chapters of his life. The political courage he demonstrated then is more relevant than ever. It should be a beacon in the mist, helping us navigate the particularly murky waters of today’s world.

1. Watch Brian Mulroney’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly in 1988