Mandela, Madiba, father of a nation

By Bruce Haigh

Photo: Nelson Mandela was the biggest, warmest and most understanding person in politics. (Finbarr O'Reilly: Reuters)

Even when he was locked away in prison, Nelson Mandela was everywhere in South Africa as a symbol of hope, says Bruce Haigh, who writes here about his own experiences during apartheid as an Australian diplomat.

I cannot remember when I first became aware of Nelson Mandela or of the system of government he was trying to change. I was an 18-year-old jackaroo in the Kimberley of Western Australia when he was sentenced to life in prison on Friday June 12, 1964.

There was no connection between us when I was working with Indigenous Australians and they were being paid in tea, sugar and whatever else station owners felt appropriate or did not want.

An awareness must have occurred at the University of Western Australia, where there was a desultory anti-apartheid movement, competing with a slightly more active anti-Vietnam movement. I studied politics and history where I must have picked something up, but not enough to stop me watching the Springboks play rugby in Perth in 1971. The demonstrations did, however, make me ask questions and by the time I joined the Department of Foreign Affairs in January 1972, I knew about Mandela and apartheid.

I was posted as a diplomat to South Africa in 1976, arriving on July 1, just two weeks after the Soweto riots had broken out. At that time there was ambivalence on the part of Australian politicians and within the department as to how far Australia should go in opposing apartheid or whether it should be opposed at all.

My predecessor at the post, Di Johnstone, had made contact with black South African artists and trade unionists. We had a handover of a week and she introduced me to friends living in black townships close to Pretoria, which she fearlessly entered at the wheel of her own car.

Mandela was everywhere; a living presence; a constant in the conversations of black South Africans and white activists. He was a spiritual being, with mention of his name invoking hope; he epitomised what people were fighting for and against. His name was evoked, chanted and put into song outside the court houses where political trials of black activists took place.

Defined by his commitment to end the evil of apartheid, Nelson Mandela became a symbol of good. He was a leader, along with the Dalai Lama, for whom rightful adulation was his natural companion. Throughout the world many have been inspired by his single-minded quest for justice and decency.

The government and the majority of white South Africans never mentioned him. He was a terrorist, a communist and a threat to white supremacist politics.

Born on July 18, 1918, in the Transkei, Nelson Mandela led the idyllic life of a bush boy until at nine he was sent away to be educated. In 1939, he was accepted to study law at the University of Fort Hare. He completed two years before the call of Johannesburg took hold. Fortunately he found work as an articled clerk with a sympathetic Jewish lawyer. He completed his degree by correspondence. He joined the ANC in 1944 and was quickly recognised as a person of considerable intellect and talent.

Nelson Mandela helped draw up the Freedom Charter which was adopted in 1955. In 1956 he was charged with treason and acquitted. In 1960 the tragic Sharpeville Massacre occurred, which set the tone of the relationship between black and white South Africans for the next 30 years.

For most of the time he was in prison, the government and the majority of white South Africans never mentioned him. For them he was where he should be, locked in prison for life on Robben Island off Cape Town. He was a terrorist, a communist and a threat to white supremacist politics, otherwise known as apartheid, which was the complete separation of the races including housing, schooling, hospitals and marriage.

Blacks were not allowed to use the same public toilets or public benches as whites, or travel in the same buses. Blacks were paid a lot less than whites and were abused and humiliated on a daily basis. Blacks were in a majority of four to one.

Every day in the weeks and months after my arrival, the press was full of the riots. The Rand Daily Mail, The Star and The Pretoria News carried graphic pictures of black students challenging the police and stories of unrestrained police brutality. The ambassador announced that the riots were due to criminal elements, stirred up by communist agitators. He directed that I write a memo on the state of the South African economy.

The tension in the air was palpable. It felt as if the country was on the edge of a revolution - it was.

I was directed not to report the causes of the rioting and to keep coverage of black affairs to a minimum. This was no good. The shame of apartheid confronted me a week or so after my arrival. An old black woman was repeatedly bypassed for service in a shop in favour of younger white customers; a black man was beaten at a bus stop because he did not have a pass to be in a white area; and blacks would not look at me on the street - they walked with eyes averted and I sensed the hostility.

In fact, the tension in the air was palpable. It felt as if the country was on the edge of a revolution - it was. The police could not cope so they called in the army.

I had been watching, listening, looking from behind the walls of white privilege. Nearly three months had gone by; I felt ready to enter the fray. As I was forbidden from writing on black affairs I had to resort to what became a favourite tool, a record of conversation. It stood as a document of what had transpired between me and the person I had chosen to talk to or interview. This particular document could not be altered by anyone except the record taker.

Synonymous with the name Nelson Mandela amongst the black youngsters was a new name, that of Steve Biko, the charismatic young leader of the Black Consciousness Movement. He was banned to King Williams Town in the Eastern Cape, but his organisation had an office in Johannesburg. I had spoken to black youngsters in Mamelodi and Attridgeville, townships close to Pretoria; they urged me to speak to these BCM office holders in Johannesburg.

I went up flights of dingy stairs to a small office crowded with hostile black men who proceeded to abuse me as representative of everything they loathed and detested about whites. I stood my ground, offered cigarettes and we started talking. The most aggressive was Tom Manthata; later he apologised and we laughed about it. Later still he went to prison and I used to visit him as well as Steve Biko's sister, Bandi, who was locked up in a prison known as The Fort in Johannesburg.

A man of heroic compromise

Nelson Mandela's goodness was mixed with a steely determination, writes Marius Benson.

I had my record of conversation and a list of contacts inside Soweto. A recommendation went ahead of me to Steve Biko in King Williams Town. The most important black network then operating in South Africa was opening up to me.

Within the embassy a showdown was looming. The ambassador did not like my records of conversation and marked me well down on my annual assessment. When I suggested that he was out of touch, he demanded my recall to Australia. That did not happen when I pointed out that he had refused to make representations on instruction from the Australian Foreign Minister on behalf of three detained black members of the YWCA. Incredibly he sent this exchange back to Canberra and was himself recalled.

I began visiting Soweto, talking to a range of people including teachers and school kids, although the schools were closed. Through Donald Woods, the courageous and outspoken newspaper editor of the East London, Daily Dispatch, I was able to meet Steve Biko and obtain a really great record of conversation. He talked at length about forging an alliance between the BCM and the ANC and his admiration for Mandela. Biko never met Mandela but he was a tangible presence in all of our conversations. Biko and I got along. He was a natural leader, helped by being tall, smart and good looking.

I became good friends with Donald Woods and helped him leave the country with the manuscript of the book 'Biko' which he had just completed but couldn't publish in South Africa.

At the time, Donald was banned following the murder of Steve Biko by police in a prison cell in Port Elizabeth. All of the BCM leadership was banned or in jail. The murder of Biko was such a shame, it was such a waste, and it reduced me to tears.

The more it became known that I was willing to help, the more the requests came. No one at the embassy knew what I was doing. I was living a strange double life.

For some time ANC members came from underground and made themselves known to me, usually wanting help of one sort or another. BCM members did the same and also needed help. Some left the country to join the ANC and undertake military training; others wanted the protection my diplomatic status offered to visit friends or for me to take secure messages to colleagues banned to distant towns and locations. There was a Catholic Bishop in a nearby country that was also a senior figure in the ANC, and in the highly charged and uncertain times created by the banning and detention of so many activists, many wanted and needed to visit him and other leaders who had fled South Africa to nearby countries in order to get direction.

Others needed a safe haven from the police for a period of time, so they stayed in my house which offered them diplomatic protection, and others needed my intervention with the police so that they could return home without fear of harassment. Others needed to leave the country for good so I took them.

The spirit of Nelson Mandela was present at the funeral of Steve Biko, where his name and importance in the struggle was invoked as often as that of Steve Biko's. It was also present at the inquest into the death of Steve Biko in Pretoria, where the songs and chants underlined his importance in maintaining the fight against apartheid.

Winnie Mandela maintained a high profile during these years and helped keep Nelson before the white-owned-and-run media. For her trouble she was banned to the small rural town of Brandfort with her daughters only to come home one night to find her house, with many important papers, burnt down. It is my belief that the constant pressure from the security police eventually unbalanced Winnie.

Freedom song

A simple, powerful song in tribute to Nelson Mandela danced its way into history, writes Tracee Hutchison.

Life in South Africa in the late seventies was fraught. And the more it became known that I was willing to help, the more the requests came and the more I felt compelled to do. It was a strange situation because no one at the embassy knew what I was doing. I was living a strange double life and the two never came together.

A lot of black and white friends suffered while I was in South Africa and some died. I felt angry and impotent. I had shifted a long way, but I had not been able to take the Australian government with me. Just as today with the question of refugees, there were some truly awful defenders of apartheid, by commission and omission, including John Howard (who opposed sanctions).

On return, together with Di Johnstone, I quietly lobbied for change in South Africa. But I was not really up to it. I was quite worn out. Everything in my life was an effort, nothing was easy, and I was cross that no-one seemed to care about South Africa, about those tiny white coffins I saw every Monday, lined up against the wall of the clinic in the squatter settlement of Mabopane 40 minutes from central Pretoria, because the drinking water in wells was being mixed with sewerage in pits at the same depth.

I first met Nelson Mandela at a lunch held in Parliament House in Canberra on October 23, 1990, during his visit to Australia not long after he was released from prison. We talked, but not for long. Earlier that year had seen a visit to Australia by Donald Woods and his wife Wendy as special guests for Refugee Week. The next time I met Nelson Mandela was at the unveiling of a statue to Steve Biko in East London in September 1997. He was in good form and worked the crowd.

I was in South Africa in June 2010 at the time of the World Cup when Zenani, a great-grandchild of Nelson, was killed in a car accident; nonetheless, Nelson turned up and performed his public duties in relation to the World Cup despite his grief.

Whereas once white South Africans either refused to acknowledge Nelson Mandela or were spitefully cruel in their comments about him, today more than 95 per cent would see him as a great South African.

That time saw the launch of Ifa Lethu, an organisation I had helped establish with Di Johnstone to receive black works of art back into South Africa which had been taken to many countries during apartheid. It was chaired and guided through its early stages by a friend, Dr Mamphela Ramphele, a former director of the World Bank and close associate of Steve Biko. From an initial joint donation from Johnstone and myself of 70 works, the collection has now grown to over 500 works of returned art. Malcolm Fraser is the Australian patron.

Mamphela also greatly assisted me in running an education program for black South Africans in the early nineties.

Whereas once white South Africans either refused to acknowledge Nelson Mandela or were spitefully cruel in their comments about him, today more than 95 per cent would see him as a great South African, much of it stemming from his embrace of white South Africa, from his publicly acknowledged affection for his white prison guard on Robben Island to his embrace of the Springbok Rugby Team in 1994, portrayed in the 2009 film 'Invictus'.

Elections were held in 1994 and Nelson Mandela became president. The final statement is his. Addressing the court at the end of what was known as the Rivonia Treason Trial, Nelson Mandela said:

Above all, we want equal political rights ... It is not true that the enfranchisement of all will result in racial domination ... the ANC has spent half a century fighting against racialism. When it triumphs it will not change that policy. This then is what the ANC is fighting for ... It is a struggle of the African people, inspired by their own suffering and their own experience. It is a struggle for the right to live.

I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

Nelson Mandela was the biggest, warmest and most understanding person in politics we have seen in modern times. He rose above mediocrity, the pedantic daily dealings and petty politics which remain our lot.

Visit News Online's special coverage website to read more reactions to the death of Nelson Mandela.

Bruce Haigh is a political commentator and retired diplomat, who served in South Africa from 1976-79 and initiated the Embassy's contact with the black South African resistance movement. Haigh's role in helping banned newspaper editor Donald Woods escape from South Africa was portrayed in the film Cry Freedom. View his full profile here.

Mandela, Madiba, father of a nation - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Nelson Mandela, former South African president, dies aged 95

David Smith in Johannesburg The Guardian, Friday 6 December 2013

South Africa's first black president died peacefully in company of his family at home in Johannesburg, Jacob Zuma announces

• All the latest reaction to Nelson Mandela's death

• GuardianWitness: what did Mandela mean to you?

Nelson Mandela's death was announced on South African TV by current president Jacob Zuma. Photograph: Getty Images

Nelson Mandela, the towering figure of Africa's struggle for freedom and a hero to millions around the world, has died at the age of 95.

South Africa's first black president died in the company of his family at home in Johannesburg after years of declining health that had caused him to withdraw from public life.

The news was announced to the country by the current president, Jacob Zuma, who in a sombre televised address said Mandela had "departed" around 8.50pm local time and was at peace.

"This is the moment of our deepest sorrow," Zuma said. "Our nation has lost its greatest son … What made Nelson Mandela great was precisely what made him human. We saw in him what we seek in ourselves.

"Fellow South Africans, Nelson Mandela brought us together and it is together that we will bid him farewell."

Zuma announced that Mandela would receive a state funeral and ordered that flags fly at half-mast.

Mandela's two youngest daughters were at the premiere of the biopic Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom in London last night. They received the news of their father's death during the screening in Leicester Square and immediately left the cinema.

Barack Obama led tributes from world leaders, referring to Mandela by his clan name – Madiba. The US president said: "Through his fierce dignity and unbending will to sacrifice his own freedom for the freedom of others, Madiba transformed South Africa – and moved all of us.

Link to video: Jacob Zuma: Nelson Mandela 'is now at peace'

"His journey from a prisoner to a president embodied the promise that human beings – and countries – can change for the better. His commitment to transfer power and reconcile with those who jailed him set an example that all humanity should aspire to, whether in the lives of nations or our own personal lives."

David Cameron said: "A great light has gone out in the world" and described Mandela as "a hero of our time".

FW de Klerk – the South African president who freed Mandela, shared the Nobel peace prize with him and paved the way for him to become South Africa's first post-apartheid head of state – said the news was deeply saddening for South Africa and the world.

"He lived reconciliation. He was a great unifier," De Klerk said.

Throughout Thursday night and into Friday morning people gathered in the streets of South Africa to celebrate Mandela's life.

In Soweto people gathered to sing and dance near the house where he once lived. They formed a circle in the middle of Vilakazi Street and sang songs from the anti-apartheid struggle. Some people were draped in South African flags and the green, yellow and black colours of Mandela's party, the African National Congress.

"We have not seen Mandela in the place where he is, in the place where he is kept," they sang, a lyric anti-apartheid protesters had sung during Mandela's long incarceration.

Several hundred people took part in lively commemorations outside Mandela's final home in the Houghton neighbourhood of Johannesburg. A man blew on a vuvuzela horn and people made impromptu shrines with national flags, candles, flowers and photographs.

Link to video: Street celebrations of Nelson Mandela's life break out in South Africa

Mandela was taken to hospital in June with a recurring lung infection and slipped into a critical condition, but returned home in September where his bedroom was converted into an intensive care unit.

His death sends South Africa deep into mourning and self-reflection, nearly 20 years after he led the country from racial apartheid to inclusive democracy.

But his passing will also be keenly felt by people around the world who revered Mandela as one of history's last great statesmen, and a moral paragon comparable with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

It was a transcendent act of forgiveness after spending 27 years in prison, 18 of them on Robben Island, that will assure his place in history. With South Africa facing possible civil war, Mandela sought reconciliation with the white minority to build a new democracy.

He led the African National Congress to victory in the country's first multiracial election in 1994. Unlike other African liberation leaders who cling to power, such as Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, he then voluntarily stepped down after one term.

South Africans hold a candle outside the house of former South African president Nelson Mandela following his death in Johannesburg. Photograph: Alexander Joe/Afp/Getty Images

Mandela was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1993.

At his inauguration a year later, the new president said: "Never, never, and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another … the sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement. Let freedom reign. God bless Africa!"

Born Rolihlahla Dalibhunga in a small village in the Eastern Cape on 18 July 1918, Mandela was given his English name, Nelson, by a teacher at his school.

He joined the ANC in 1943 and became a co-founder of its youth league. In 1952, he started South Africa's first black law firm with his partner, Oliver Tambo.

Mandela was a charming, charismatic figure with a passion for boxing and an eye for women. He once said: "I can't help it if the ladies take note of me. I am not going to protest."

He married his first wife, Evelyn Mase, in 1944. They were divorced in 1957 after having three children. In 1958, he married Winnie Madikizela, who later campaigned to free her husband from jail and became a key figure in the struggle.

When the ANC was banned in 1960, Mandela went underground. After the Sharpeville massacre, in which 69 black protesters were shot dead by police, he took the difficult decision to launch an armed struggle. He was arrested and eventually charged with sabotage and attempting to overthrow the government.

Conducting his own defence in the Rivonia trial in 1964, he said: "I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.

"It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

He escaped the death penalty but was sentenced to life in prison, a huge blow to the ANC that had to regroup to continue the struggle. But unrest grew in townships and international pressure on the apartheid regime slowly tightened.

Finally, in 1990, FW de Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC and Mandela was released from prison amid scenes of jubilation witnessed around the world.

In 1992, Mandela divorced Winnie after she was convicted on charges of kidnapping and accessory to assault.

His presidency rode a wave of tremendous global goodwill but was not without its difficulties. After leaving frontline politics in 1999, he admitted he should have moved sooner against the spread of HIV/Aids in South Africa.

His son died from an Aids-related illness. On his 80th birthday, Mandela married Graça Machel, the widow of the former president of Mozambique. It was his third marriage. In total, he had six children, of whom three daughters survive: Pumla Makaziwe (Maki), Zenani and Zindziswa (Zindzi). He has 17 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who headed the truth and reconciliation committee after the fall of apartheid, said: "He transcended race and class in his personal actions, through his warmth and through his willingness to listen and to emphasise with others. And he restored others' faith in Africa and Africans."

Mandela was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2001 and retired from public life to be with his family and enjoy some "quiet reflection". But he remained a beloved and venerated figure, with countless buildings, streets and squares named after him. His every move was scrutinised and his health was a constant source of media speculation.

Mandela continued to make occasional appearances at ANC events and attended the inauguration of the current president, Jacob Zuma. His 91st birthday was marked by the first annual "Mandela Day" in his honour.

He was last seen in public at the final of the 2010 World Cup in Johannesburg, a tournament he had helped bring to South Africa for the first time. Early in 2011, he was taken to hospital in a health scare but he recovered and was visited by Michelle Obama and her daughters a few months later.

In January 2012, he was notably missing from the ANC's centenary celebrations due to his frail condition. With other giants of the movement such as Tambo and Walter Sisulu having gone before Mandela, the defining chapter of Africa's oldest liberation movement is now closed.

Nelson Mandela, former South African president, dies aged 95 | World news | The Guardian

Dancing with Israel's elephant

By ABC's Marius Benson Posted Tue 3 Dec 2013

Photo: Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said President Obama was wrong to declare Iran's move to be an important first step. (AFP: Ronen Zvulun/Pool)

As news of progress in the Iran nuclear talks was breaking, Marius Benson asked a long-serving Israeli spokesman what seems an obvious question, but one that is almost never asked.

A few years ago I was on holidays in Iran. A great country to travel in, by the way, brimming with attractions both cultural and natural.

We were sitting in the back seat of the car, while in the front sat the driver and with him the guide - both young, Western-oriented Iranians wildly critical of then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Driving through desert landscape we noticed that large artillery guns, pointing skywards, were appearing with increasing frequency.

We were approaching the Natanz nuclear facility.

"I'll just take a few photos," I joked.

"No, no, no!" Our guide pivoted rapidly in his seat, waving his arm at me. His admirable sense of humour stopped short of possibly attracting the attention of Iran's security forces.

In the past couple of weeks the world has seen what looks like a definite change in Iran's position on its nuclear program, with Teheran offering a range of concessions in return for an easing of Western sanctions. That change under the new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has been welcomed in Washington and more widely, but it has been met with dismissal and scepticism in Israel, as well as in some parts of the Arab world.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said President Obama was wrong to declare Iran's move to be an important first step. It was, he said, a mistake that would take the pressure off the Ayatollahs to abandon the nuclear program.

As the story was breaking I interviewed Mark Regev, Prime Minister Netanyahu's long-serving spokesman, a man who has been putting Israel's position to the world for many years. He re-stated the official position on Iran but then I put to him what seems an obvious question, but one that is almost never asked of Israel.

The elephant ignored in the room whenever Israel talks about Iran's potential to develop nuclear weapons is the fact that Israel has nuclear weapons and has had a nuclear arsenal for decades. Whenever an Israeli official is asked about them, which is almost never, they obfuscate. When I pressed a senior government official on the issue several years ago he finally declared that his government had a policy of "deliberate ambiguity" on the issue.

While Israel's nuclear arsenal is an official secret it is an open secret. Any number of analysts report on its likely extent and the location of nuclear facilities is known. One obvious indication of the existence of the weapons, and Israel's senstivity on the issue, was the jailing of Mordecai Vanunu, the former Israeli nuclear technician, who was imprisoned for nearly two decades, more than half of that in solitary, from the mid-1980s for revealing nuclear weapons secrets (and the secret was not that there were no nuclear weapons).

That Israel is reluctant to talk about the weapons is understandable; what is surprising is that the Israeli government is seldom asked about them. But that is what I did in the interview with Mark Regev - and this is how the interview went when I pointed to the thermo-nuclear elephant in the room:

MB: Mark Regev, can I ask you a question that some put in this context, which is, how can Israel demand that other countries, like Iran, in the Middle East, not have the prospect of any nuclear weapon when Israel itself has such a large nuclear arsenal?

MR: Well first of all there's been no change in the long-standing Israeli position not to be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the region.

MB: But you have nuclear weapons.

MR: No, we say specifically we will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the region. But more specifically I would say in answer to your question it is Iran which says Israel must be destroyed, not the other way around. It's Iran that calls Israel a cancer that must be removed. It's Iran which says Israel must be obliterated off the map.

MB: But back on the question of nuclear weapons, can I just clarify? When you say Israel's position is you won't be the first to introduce them, you have, what, 200-plus nuclear weapons now?

MR: No, no and I would say the following if you would allow me. The problem in the Middle East is not those countries that up till now have not joined the NPT, the Non Proliferation Treaty. The problem is exactly the opposite. It's those countries that have joined the NPT and have cheated and lied. And there's a whole group of them...

MB: Yeah, but...on the nuclear weapons issue, are you saying Israel doesn't have nuclear weapons?

MR: I'm answering your question, you're just not letting me finish the sentences.

MB: No, no, I like to directly get an answer to that - are you saying Israel does not have nuclear weapons?

MR: I'm saying Israel believes the 4 to1 talks about extending the NPT in the Middle East; one has to have an NPT that works. And you have in the Middle East four countries that signed the NPTand have cheated and the NPT has not been worth the paper it has been printed on.

MB: Sure but there's only one country in the Middle East which is generally known to have nuclear weapons. That's Israel.

MR: Israel has said - and I'll say it again - we will not be the first country in the Middle East to introduce nuclear weapons into the region. But if you'll allow me to complete the point. It's not just Gadaffi's Libya that cheated on the NPT, it's Assad’s Syria, it's Saddam Hussein's Iraq and now the Iranians. How can anyone come to Israel and say Israel should join the NPT when you have in the region the failure of this treaty. When you have consistent behaviour by Israel's enemies who've signed the NPT and then it's clear to everyone have broken it, have violated the agreement.

MB: Mark Regev thank you very much

MR: My pleasure sir.

Dancing with Israel's elephant - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Shock four-country poll reveals widening gulf between Britain and EU

 Toby Helm, political editor The Observer, Sunday 1 December 2013

Poll of France, Germany, Poland and the UK shows British hostile to EU, and other nations hostile to Britain

Sir Malcolm Rifkind wants a proper debate on EU membership. Photograph: AP

A powerful cross-party alliance including former Tory foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg is calling for an urgent fightback against spiralling anti-European sentiment as a new four-nation poll suggests the UK could be heading out of the EU.

The landmark survey of more than 5,000 voters in the UK, Germany, France and Poland finds British people far more hostile to the EU and its policies than those in the other EU states, and strikingly low support for British membership among people on the continent.

At the same time, the total numbers of people in Germany and France who support giving Britain a special deal on membership to satisfy British opinion are heavily outnumbered by those who oppose doing so, which suggests that David Cameron may struggle to achieve his hoped-for tailor-made arrangement for the UK.

Testing cultural opinions, the poll finds very few British people choose to describe themselves as European. In other EU nations, enthusiasm for the concept of Europeanism is far higher.

Opinium found that just 26% of British voters regard the EU as, overall, a "good thing" compared with 42% who say it is a "bad thing". In Poland 62% say it is a good thing and 13% bad; in Germany 55% good and 17% bad, and in France 36% good and 34% bad.

When asked about the UK's contribution to the EU, there is little enthusiasm among our partners, and little to suggest they will go out of their way to keep us in. Just 9% of Germans and 15% of French people think the UK is a positive influence on the EU, with more Poles, 33%, taking that view.

Only 16% of Germans and 26% of French people back the idea of a special deal being struck for the UK. Cameron has said he intends to renegotiate the UK terms of entry and hold an in/out referendum if he wins a majority at the next election, offering the new arrangement to the British people in a referendum.

The idea of Britain leaving the EU does not appear to worry our European partners unduly. Just 24% of French voters said a UK exit would have a negative effect, compared with 36% of Germans and 51% of Poles.

Rifkind said: "There needs to be a serious debate about the real benefits of – as well as the real problems about – British membership of the EU. Without it we could do serious damage to Britain's interests."

Clegg said next year's European elections represented a key test and attacked those intent on taking Britain out of the EU. He said: "Everybody knows the EU needs reform. But simply carping from the sidelines and flirting with exit undermines British leadership in the EU, fails to deliver reform and leaves Britain increasingly isolated. The debate about Europe is no longer about who is for or against reform – everybody agrees on that – it is between those who believe we can lead in the EU and those who want to head for the exit.

"That's why next year's elections will be so important: the Liberal Democrats will be the leading party of 'in'. It's time we challenged Ukip and large swaths of the Conservative party who want to betray Britain's vital national interest by pulling us out of the world's largest borderless single market, on which millions of jobs depend."

Labour MP and former Europe minister Peter Hain urged pro-Europeans to stand up and fight: "This is a wake-up call for British pro-Europeans that Britain – especially if the Tories win the next election – is heading for an exit from the EU which would be an utter disaster for British jobs, prosperity and influence in the world. But it is equally a wake-up call for the Brussels Bubble, which is totally out of touch with Europe's citizens."

The poll shows concern about immigration to be almost as high in France as in the UK. In Britain, 64% of voters think the EU's immigration policies have a negative effect; 59% say the same in France.

It also reveals that more UK voters feel an affinity with the US than with their European neighbours, whereas our EU partners tend to choose other EU nations. When asked who they would generally support on occasions when there was a disagreement between the US and EU countries, 37% of UK respondent said they would tend to support America; just 10% would generally side with Europe.

British people are not negative about everything the EU does: 54% think free movement rules are good for tourism against 6% who think the reverse. There is also strong endorsement for free-trade benefits. Nearly half of those polled say the absence of customs controls and tariffs on goods and services is an advantage. Only 10% see free trade as a disadvantage.

Ukip leader Nigel Farage said: "This is a fascinating and comprehensive study into the relative relationships between countries within and about the EU. We, on these islands feel, due to our history as a globally trading nation, much more at home with our cousins in the Anglosphere than we do with our friends on the continent."

Shock four-country poll reveals widening gulf between Britain and EU | Politics | The Observer