Nelson Mandela. Photo: AFP
Nelson Mandela would not have campaigned for the ACT Party if he were still alive, the anti-apartheid activist's grandson says.
During a speech at the Moutere Hills Community Centre in rural Tasman on Thursday, ACT Party leader David Seymour told a crowd of 250 people that New Zealand had become a "lawless" country.
It was ACT's policy to put more people in prison, which he said was "some of the best money you can spend".
Seymour also touched on co-governance.
"Every country that has ever tried to do what this government has tried to do has either ended in disaster or successfully campaigned to reintroduce liberal democracy.
"I daresay if Nelson Mandela was alive today he would be campaigning for ACT."
Seymour was mocked on Twitter for his comment, which came to the attention of Mandela's grandson, Kweku Mandela.
"My grandfather definitely loved the people of New Zealand and I can say categorically he would not campaign for this today or any other day in the past," he tweeted on Saturday.
Asked for his response, Seymour said: "Far be it from me to question the great man's grandson, but Nelson Mandela did say 'all people are born equal, with each entitled in equal measure to life [and] liberty'.
"That is a core ACT value and why we are so opposed to co-governance."
ACT leader David Seymour. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
At the time Mandela made his famous remark, he said people were also entitled in equal measure to "prosperity, human rights and good governance".
Mandela, alongside then-state president of South Africa Frederik Willem de Klerk, was awarded the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for their work in ending the country's apartheid regime and spearheading a new democratic South Africa.
Mandela became South Africa's first president in 1994.
Kweku Mandela is a producer and directed Mandela's Children, a documentary based on his grandfather's life story, told in his own words to his 22 grandchildren.
The interviews took place over five days and were some of the last Mandela did before his death in 2013.
Kweku Mandela told The Guardian in 2012: "Every individual has a surname they have to live up to. I've come to terms with mine. I'm very proud of my granddad."
At his meeting in Tasman, Seymour also said Aotearoa was "full of heinous crimes" and "not safe to run a dairy anymore".
The cost of living crisis had reached such a point that 12-year-olds he met in schools asked him why food and fuel was so expensive.
He also spoke of Labour's "culture of extravagance and excess", its "war on plastic" and "war on landlords", who are treated "like al-Qaeda".
- This story was first published on Stuff