While the rest of the world has spent the last few days singing the praises of the late Nelson Mandela, Pia Kjærsgaard, the former head of Dansk Folkeparti, is sticking to her conviction that Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) was a terrorist organisation and that the Danish government should have supported South Africa’s apartheid regime in its struggle to maintain control of the country in the 1990s.

“It was many years ago, and a different time, but I support what I said because the ANC was very violent,” Kjærsgaard told metroXpress newspaper.

Kjærsgaard said that it was “luck” that South Africa has since become a different country, but acknowledged that “Mandela must obviously be given a great deal of credit for that."

In the 90s, Kjærsgaard was a member of parliament for Fremskridtspartiet, the Progess Party, and, argued that Denmark should support the sitting South African government rather than “the leaders of the terrorist organisation the ANC, including the recently-released Nelson Mandela".

Mandela spent 27 years in prison for his role battling apartheid in South Africa. He was released in 1990 and became the country's first democratically-elected president in 1994, the year after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He died last week at the age of 95.