SEVENTEEN years after the man himself walked free from prison, the Nelson Mandela TV Lounge plaque is also free.
The deputy leader of the Scottish Conservatives has finally made a belated contribution to the truth and reconciliation process by admitting stealing a university memorial to the former ANC leader.
As a right-wing student in Aberdeen during the 1
980s Murdo Fraser said he "appropriated" a plaque honouring Mandela but has now returned the engraved "trophy" to students.
However, his alma mater's union has still to see any sign of it. And Fraser's act of youthful folly has been condemned as "outrageous" and "infantile" by a senior lecturer at the university.
Murdo Fraser, picture circa 1990s, took the memorial from the students' union at Aberdeen University during the 1980s, when he was an undergraduate
The list MSP for Mid-Scotland and Fife graduated from Aberdeen with an LLB in 1986 before becoming the chairman of both the Scottish and UK Young Conservatives.
During that time he gained a reputation as a champion of unfashionable right-wing causes and a strong opponent of the leftist views usually associated with student life.
As such, Fraser could not resist stirring up controversy when his fellow undergraduates named a room in the students' union after the South African freedom fighter.
The removal of the plaque sparked outrage on campus but the culprit remained untraced and the metal memorial was never returned. When Mandela was freed in 1990 and then went on to become president in 1994 it became largely forgotten.
Now, after the passing of more than two decades, the former solicitor decided the time was right to come clean.
He said: "At one point in time in the 1980s the Aberdeen University Union housed the rather grandly titled Nelson Mandela TV Lounge.
"One night the plaque to this lounge was appropriated by a person or persons unknown.
"All that I can say is that it came into my possession and remained there for around 20 years."
The Tory decided to return the plaque after being invited to give a talk at a Christmas party organised by current members of the university's Conservative Association.
"During my speech I produced the plaque and felt it would be fitting to present it to the chairman. It was a gesture that was warmly welcomed by the gathered students and this item is now back in Aberdeen where it belongs."
During the 1980s a section of over-zealous young Tory students gained notoriety by wearing "Hang Mandela" T-shirts and badges, but Fraser insisted there was no malice meant in his own actions.
"This was a bit of a student prank aimed at winding up some of the lefties on campus.
"There was certainly no real high-politics involved and it was not meant to be taken seriously."
But Dr Michael Dyer, a long-serving member of the university's politics and international relations department, felt Fraser's "outrageous prank" was misguided and out of touch. He said: "By and large at that time there was a recognition across a wide political spectrum that Mandela's imprisonment was unjust.
"Mrs Thatcher, of course, chose to regard him as a terrorist - possibly reflecting the views of her husband and his cronies, her own eccentricity and cussedness towards fashionable liberal causes.
"Conservative students were few in those days and those that joined such an unfashionable cause deliberately adopted 'nutty' right-wing views largely, one suspects, for the hell of it and to out-Thatcher the Thatcherites. Murdo Fraser's action simply reflected the infantile nature of much right-wing student activity."
The respected academic claimed that the Thatcher era was one of the few to provoke controversy on campus.
He said: "Aberdeen is not noted for political activity amongst its student population with their most notable contribution being to provide bus drivers during the General Strike of 1926."
Aberdeen University Student Association believed the plaque had not yet been returned.
Its president, Angela Fraser (no relation), said: "We have seen no sign of it."
DURING his 27 years behind bars Nelson Mandela became an icon of resistance against the racist South African Apartheid regime that jailed him.
He was particularly venerated in Scotland's seats of learning. In the 1980s, Strathclyde University Union renamed a bar in his honour and he was named as an honorary member of the association. There was controversy in 1987 when Winnie Mandela, his then wife, was named as Glasgow University's rector, amid fears over her probity.
But the university's links to the anti-Apartheid movement were far deeper, and back in 1962, a young Donald Dewar fought unsuccessfully to have the Nobel Prize-winning then leader of the ANC, Albert Lutuli, installed as the rector.
But there was not universal acclaim for Mandela on campuses. In the 1980s, members of the Federation of Conservative Students declared the future South African President to be "a communist terrorist".
The full article contains 801 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
