Chitra Karve, chair of ACTSA (Action for Southern Africa), remembers very well drawing on trusted relationships in Southern Africa to help set up a meeting between the Lawrence family and Mr Mandela, two weeks after the racially-motivated murder of their son Stephen, on this day in 1993.
On the 30th anniversary of Stephen’s death, Chitra said ‘Reflecting on that private meeting between Mandela and the Lawrences, I am reminded that international solidarity is powerful; but also, the findings of the Casey Report into the police published last month tell us that change to racist systems and bias takes much longer than we imagine or hope for.”
At the time of Mandela’s visit with the family, Stephen’s mother Baroness Lawrence, contrasted Mr Mandela’s gesture with the response of the British government. ‘Why is it that a leader from a foreign country shows us sympathy when our government has expressed no interest at all?’ she said. Neville Lawrence, Stephen’s father, credited the meeting with Mandela as giving impetus to the police investigation, which at that point had not led to the arrest of any suspects, despite names being shared with the police a few days after the murder. The day after Mandela met the Lawrence’s the police made initial arrests.
Stephen’s murder happened a year before the first democratic, non-racial elections in South Africa. Killings multiplied in that country while regressive state and other forces tried to prevent peaceful elections. Chitra was training to be a lawyer, and as a leading anti-apartheid activist she had a trusted relationship with South African liberation leaders. She and the then director of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, Mike Terry, helped to broker that private meeting between the Lawrence family and Mandela.
It took place early before Mandela’s breakfast meeting; Mandela was alone and spoke with the Lawrence’s for 25 minutes. He focused intently on the family, listening to their trauma, saying ‘I know what it means to parents to lose a child under such tragic circumstances.’ He said such brutality was all too commonplace in South Africa, ‘where Black lives are cheap’. Later, Mr Mandela said their tragedy was ‘our tragedy’.
Chitra recalls ‘At that time there was growing awareness of racism in the UK. More large organisations were joining the fight against racial discrimination. My work on Southern Africa echoed some of the issues I was experiencing as a woman of Indian origin in the UK. And then the awful murder of Stephen Lawrence happened.” Chitra added, ‘in 1993 we were coming to a new phase in our work as the Anti-Apartheid Movement. ACTSA was formed the next year because after elections the work needed to continue, in unity with Southern African people, as they built Black-led nations denied them by apartheid and colonialism. As Mandela extended his hand in solidarity to the Lawrence family, we also understood how much work lay ahead to secure racial justice both in Southern Africa and the UK, because these issues are interlinked, they are systemic’.
Photos taken by the sole photographer permitted at the meeting and released to the press, energised the conversation around the Lawrence case and it became international news. Four years later, outrage at police failures eventually led to the McPherson inquiry in July 1997– and the seminal report which declared the Metropolitan Police to be institutionally racist. Mr Mandela met with the Lawrence’s again in 1998 and in 2003 (read more here: https://gal-dem.com/treasured-moment-doreen-lawrence-nelson-mandela/)
We asked Chitra what she hopes for now, three decades later: ‘Clearly, we are further along the road of dismantling the legacies of apartheid and colonialism because of the work ACTSA’s partners are doing in Southern Africa. I’ve been able to see at close quarters the inspiring achievements as well as the difficulties, and ACTSA’s members continue to learn from Southern African activists. We see a new generation of people in Southern Africa and the UK building fresh alliances, jointly addressing corrupt governments, unaccountable corporations, climate damage and possible solutions. Black academics and students are de-colonising curricula. I hope this renewed solidarity, inspired by such people as Graca Machel, Ruth First, Mandela, Tambo, Kathrada, Tutu and others, can be deepened by older and younger activists working together.
ACTSA remains committed to social justice movements in the region. We always knew it would take more than a vote to get over apartheid, and it takes a fundamental change of mindset to undo the way racism affects our world, like institutional bias in the police. Young people know this and ACTSA is here for the long haul to support their international solidarity to right historic wrongs of racism so that people can be free and treated equally. Isn’t that why lives were given to the anti-racist struggle – so we can all be free?’
Read more about that meeting here: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/blog/articles/nelson-mandela-me-activists-stories
ACTSA is a charity and a membership organisation of individual activists and affiliates working with Southern African civil society: https://actsa.org/get-involved/