Eric Byrne (Dublin South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am representing the Labour Party. However, I must confess that I will need to blend my membership of the Labour Party with a personal chronology. As a 20 year old I left Ireland along with two colleagues. We hit Africa in late 1969. Travelling down through Africa to our ultimate destination of South Africa took six and a half months. This allowed us to absorb the magnificent culture of Africa because we travelled through so many diverse nations. The only country to which we were refused entry was Rhodesia at the Kariba dam. We duly went to Kasungula through Botswana and entered South Africa at Francistown. My political outlook was evolving and becoming clearer. We were treated in an overly friendly way by a white farming community in Francistown. I did not quite get it until later that the link was that they as Boers regarded us Irish as their heroes because our common enemy was England. I lived in South Africa during the apartheid era. Not only the South African experience but the experience of living in Africa for three to four years committed me to return to Ireland and to enter the world of politics. The horrors of the apartheid era in South Africa caused me to come back to Ireland and to become politically engaged and ultimately to join the Labour Party.

My time in South Africa was a very enlightening and not uneventful experience. I worked in Alexandra township. On the way from Johannesburg every morning it was not possible to see Alexandra township because it was covered in fog caused by the burning of cheap coal. People stood at the hosepipes to collect water. I spent some time there and then I went to the great leader's land of the Transkei where I spent six months. It is a most beautiful part of Africa. Everywhere we went we bonded with very good, decent, progressive Africans, Indians and coloureds. Mandela was a member of the Xhosa who have a magnificent clicking language. I remember the dancing of the women, the colour of the traditional dress and the round houses in the spectacular landscape.

I eventually moved on but I got in trouble with the security forces. BOSS was a very active intelligence agency and I am happy to say I paid a very small penalty by spending time in John Vorster Square. We are honouring the memory of the great leader of the ANC. I remind the audience that many political activists were incarcerated in John Vorster Square, some of whom were murdered. People like Imam Abdullah died in 1969, ostensibly by slipping on the stairs, and Ahmed Kamal died in 1971, ostensibly having fallen from a tenth floor window.

Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in a jail. As a white person I experienced the brutality of the white, mainly Boer, English-speaking Dutch Reformed Church. The treatment of the African community was hair-raising and frightening in its viciousness. The security people stopped people alighting from trains and incarcerated them or sent them back to where they came from. The vicious pass laws and apartheid destroyed families in Africa.

I am honouring the great leader because I could imagine I would be so embittered at the white regime if I were an African, an Asian or a coloured person that I would not have been able to restrain my people. I offer my greatest respect to the leader of the ANC, a man who managed to create the rainbow country which is today's South Africa. When we in Ireland look enviously at that country's economy and its economic growth, we see what he achieved in South Africa in such a short time. He was a man who was unparalleled in the world.