David Miliband

Foreign Secretary

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Thursday 26 June, 2008

Mandela at 90

However frail Nelson Mandela looks his smile brings back his youth.  Many people hearing him speak at the unveiling of his statue in Parliament Square last year will have wondered whether he would be fit enough to come back.  But he has.  I have on my desk a bookmark given out last July at the unveiling with a great quote from Mandela's book Long Walk to Freedom: "Oliver [Tambo, Secretary General of the ANC] and I saw the sights of the city that had once commanded nearly two thirds of the globe, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament.  When I gloried in the beauty of these buildings, I was ambivalent about what they represented.  When we saw the statue of General Smuts near Westminster Abbey, Oliver and I joked that perhaps someday there would be a statue of us instead."  Who says belief in progress is naive?

Posted at 09:58 26 June 2008 by David Miliband  |  Comments[3]

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I wonder what the victims of The Church Street Bombing think of this statue?

Posted by Justin on June 26, 2008 at 01:03 PM BST #

I cried when I saw Madiba this week, he is looking very frail call him what you like and yes I've read his book and know what he was responsible for but for him to come out of prison with no bitterness and such humanity, what a wonderful man if only SA could have had him a as leader for another 10yrs maybe it would have taken a different path. let him rest I think he has done enough. racism is wrong whether it was apartheid or what Mugabe is up to.

Posted by gill on June 27, 2008 at 11:34 AM BST #

I great man, especially since he has found it in his heart to forgive the British political system that supported Aparthied. But I don't think he should be preasurized into condeming Mugabe. He is becoming a political pawn of a UK/US agenda of regime change. The MDC is a western creature supported and financed by the UK and US. That is why Brown is so bitter, because the failure of the MDC reflects badly on him as a international statesman.

Posted by Stu on June 28, 2008 at 12:28 PM BST #

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