In the leafy, middle-class London suburb of Muswell Hill, English workmen are putting the finishing touches to a new council housing development of 24 houses. It is due to be completed this month and will then be officially opened and named “Nelson Mandela Close”.
Last week the 1985 Third World Prize, awarded annually by the London-based Third World Foundation for Social and Economic Studies, was awarded jointly to the imprisoned black leader and his wife, Winnie Mandela. The citation for the award, which included a medallion, saluted Mandela for his “heroic fight” and his wife for her courage. A past winner of this prize was the former West German Chancellor, Willy Brandt.
The award was made at a reception at the Institute of Directors in Pall Mall. There is irony in the contrast of these plush surroundings in contrast with the Pollsmoor prison cell — and until recently — the township house in Brandfort, near Bloemfontein. These are only two of the latest in the long list of honours and acknowledgments that have been bestowed on Nelson Mandela, covering Britain in a rash from coast to coast.
One of the first changes in place names here was when Camden Labour-controlled Council switched Selous Street to Mandela Street, particularly apt for the address of the headquarters of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement. Across the River Thames, on the South Bank — where the concert halls attract audiences of four million a year — a great resin bronze sculpture of Mandela looks out over a city he visited while he was underground in 1962, shortly before he was arrested and eventually sentenced to life imprisonment.
The Labour-controlled Greater London Council (GLC) — London’s City Council had the statue erected in this prominent site earlier this year. It is generally the left — Labour, and occasionally Liberal — which in the main have bestowed the recognition and honours on Mandela here. But it is not solely so.
As other sectors, business and academic, have recently sought to speak to the ANC, so the sphere in which this imprisoned black leader has become a cult figure of considerable stature has widened. A survey of only some of the honours bestowed on him in the UK during the past year shows how far his reputation has spread from Robben Island and Pollsmoor jail.
In July, Strathclyde University awarded an honorary doctorate in law to Mandela; Aberdeen awarded him the Freedom of the City; Lancaster University presented an honorary doctorate in law to the black prisoner, and the Revenue Staff Federation named its Commonwealth trade union scholarship after him. The London borough of Southwark joined a growing list of towns and cities by naming a new road “Mandela Way”.
In Nottingham, the city council named a room in a sports centre after him. In June, mayors representing more than 50 towns and cities came to London and, dressed in their ceremonial robes and chains of office, marched from the House of Commons to Downing Street where they handed in a petition urging the Prime Minister to take, further steps to secure Mandela’s release. It is not only in the UK that there has been this remarkable move to honour the imprisoned black leader.
The Free University of Belgium awarded him an honorary doctorate last year, East Germany renamed a school the Nelson Mandela School; as far back as 1979 the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding was awarded to Mandela; in 1983 a bronze bust dedicated to him was unveiled in Dublin’s Merrion Square. In 1982 he was made an Honorary Citizen of Rome and in 1984 he and his wife were granted the Freedom of the City of Aberdeen.
In 1981 Mandela was awarded the Freedom of the City of Glasgow, and in 1983 the Freedom of the Borough of Greenwich, in London. It is ironic that the freedom of so many areas should have been conferred on a man who, in reality, has so little freedom. Public gardens in Hull were named Mandela Gardens by Hull City Council in 1983 and the Civic Gardens in Leeds have been renamed the Mandela Gardens.