Twenty five years ago I went off to University in Hull knowing little of South Africa; that was about to change.

The university had a share portfolio that propped up the bastions of the apartheid state and the issue of "disinvestment", as it came to be known, was one that dominated some of my political life as a student and part of my adult life afterwards.

It is a deeply ingrained part of the psyche of the left that we are involved a noble struggle for human liberation in the teeth of oppression.
Frankly, this rarely seemed plausible at meetings of the Great Harwood branch of the Labour Party, but the struggle in South Africa was a real one. We lefties always felt that we were on the side of the good guys and here was proof positive - apartheid was inhuman and to oppose it enhanced our own humanity.

Twenty five years later and I stood in the tiny cell that had caged Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, apartheid's worst maximum security prison for political prisoners. The cell is perhaps seven feet by seven feet with a barred window looking out into a yard.

My guide was exactly the same age as me and he was a former inmate of the prison, his crime was being an active member of the African National Congress (ANC). When we were 17 and I was planning to go to university he was imprisoned on Robben Island.

There we were in Mandela's cell, just along from his own cell and we talked of the past. Places and names tripped off the tongue, Sharpville, Soweto, Biko, the atrocities of South Africa's racist past.

My own contribution to his liberation seemed pathetic: I'd been in a student sit-in, organised a boycott of Barclays Bank (I had a wry smile when I met the chief executive of Barclays South Africa later on), I'd given out a few leaflets. I'd worn an ANC badge, big deal. But, just for a moment on Robben Island, I knew that when millions of people make their own seemingly futile and lonely stand against an injustice, sometimes the good guys do win and we all play our part, however small.

I went to Soweto, the township of three million people near Johannesburg where I visited a hospice for people with HIV/Aids. The day I went to Soweto the general election date was announced and so I asked people which party they intended to vote for. Every black person I met in the townships said they were voting for the ANC.

Now, I am proud to support the ANC, but South Africa still faces enormous problems with over 10 per cent of the population HIV positive and over 35 per cent unemployed (both figures are higher in the townships), so at first I was surprised at the solidity of ANC support.

But really the best reasons for voting for the ANC came from the townships: "They gave me my dignity" said one; "the queue is moving" said another.

Indeed, the queue is moving. As BBC special correspondent Fergal Keane pointed out in a series of perceptive articles, despite the terrible legacy of apartheid South Africa is getting better, perhaps even especially in the townships.

He concluded that if you visit South Africa you should break out of the white tourist trap of the Cape and visit Soweto, land of hope. To which I would only add, visit Robben Island and witness a triumph for humanity over inhumanity.

Greg Pope is Labour MP for Hyndburn.