The war in Gaza was the focus of the tenth anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s death on Tuesday (December 5) in South Africa, with senior Hamas officials present alongside the anti-apartheid hero’s family during the commemorations in Pretoria.
South Africa’s first black president, Madiba – his nickname which is also the clan name – died on December 5, 2013 at the age of 95. No official ceremony on Tuesday, nor solemn speech from the head of state, Cyril Ramaphosa: the family simply laid a wreath in the afternoon at the foot of a statue bearing the effigy of Mandela in front of the government headquarters in the capital Pretoria.
Senior Hamas officials were present: Basem Naim, former Hamas health minister in Gaza, and Khaled Qaddoumi, representative of the Palestinian Islamist movement in Iran. In the preceding days, they had participated in a conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Johannesburg, organized in particular by Nelson Mandela’s grandson, Mandla Mandela.
“Gender-Based Apartheid”
The creation of a Palestinian state was considered by his grandfather as “the great moral question of our time”, he recalled to the national channel SABC, emphasizing his desire to “take up the torch”. South Africa, a fervent defender of the Palestinian cause, is one of the most critical countries of the massive and deadly Israeli bombings on the Gaza Strip, in retaliation for the bloody attacks in Israel carried out on October 7 by Hamas.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner, Pakistani Malala Yousafzai, invited to Johannesburg by the Mandela Foundation, for her part denounced the “unjust bombing of Gaza” during a speech.
The young woman, distinguished in 2014 for her fight for girls’ education, also took the opportunity to condemn the treatment of women in Afghanistan, accusing the Taliban regime of making it impossible to “be a girl.” “South Africans fought for race-based apartheid to be called as such and criminalized internationally,” she stressed, calling for “gender-based apartheid” to be criminalized now. Last month, prominent feminist activists and personalities called on the United Nations to revise the text of a treaty under discussion on crimes against humanity.
“Holy reputation”
If the simple mention of Mandela always seems capable of mobilizing public opinion on causes to be defended, the anniversary of his death had a bittersweet taste for South Africans. For some, “in ten years, not much has changed or improved” in the country. On the one hand, the memory of the ex-convict from Robben Island who brought apartheid to its knees and brought democracy. On the other, a country still led by its party, the African National Congress (ANC), but weighed down by corruption, power outages and become the most unequal in the world, according to the World Bank. And the ANC could fall below 50% in the 2024 elections, according to polls.
According to the former American ambassador to Pretoria contacted by AFP, Jendayi Frazer, Mandela’s “sacred reputation” nevertheless remains “extremely strong” and the next generation of politicians should look to “the example of Mandela and his high morality.”
Nelson Mandela died surrounded by his family after months of agony and anguish for South Africans and his admirers around the world, during which those around him simply repeated that the old sage was in a “critical but stable” condition. “. His image remains very present in the country: on bank notes, through graffiti on city walls and the presence of dozens of statues. Verne Harris, interim president of the Mandela Foundation and long-time Madiba archivist, acknowledges that a “deep nostalgia” remains palpable among many South Africans. But “perhaps it is time to let it go, and find new models for ourselves,” he believes.
