Channel 4‘s interview with the Prime Minister in South Africa has again given rise to the internet myth that Margaret Thatcher somehow supported apartheid. Here’s Nelson Mandela setting the record straight.

“[Margaret Thatcher] is an enemy of apartheid. Our differences are in regard to the methods of inducing the Government to dismantle apartheid.”

Also worth noting that Michael Crick’s accusation that “Mrs Thatcher believed that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist” is nonsense. In fact when she met the leader of South Africa in 1984, official records show that Thatcher told Botha “very firmly” that “apartheid had to be dismantled, [and] Nelson Mandela and other prisoners released”. Anti-apartheid movement president Trevor Huddleston wrote to Thatcher to say her words were “truly all I could have wished for”.

Channel 4 should be better than to peddle comprehensively disproven internet myths.