By Carien du Plessis and shafiek tassiem

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Days after his launch from 27 years in jail in February 1990, anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela gave Palestinian chief Yasser Arafat a bear hug, symbolising his embrace of a trigger his nation’s governing ANC get together continues to champion.

It was a gesture as controversial then as South Africa’s assist for the Palestinian trigger is at the moment, however Mandela dismissed criticism.

Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation had been an unwavering supporter of Mandela’s wrestle towards white minority rule and plenty of South Africans noticed parallels between it and the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation.

“We have been lucky that with their assist, we have been in a position to obtain our freedom … My grandfather … mentioned our freedom is incomplete with out the Palestinian wrestle,” his grandson Mandla Mandela recalled in an interview forward of the tenth commemoration of Mandela’s demise.

From Dec. 3 to five Mandla Mandela, who can be an ANC lawmaker, hosted a solidarity convention in Johannesburg for the Palestinians.

It was attended by members of Hamas, an organisation Israel has vowed to annihilate in retaliation for its Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel that killed 1,200 individuals and noticed round 240 taken hostage, in response to Israeli tallies.

Israeli bombing of Gaza since then has killed greater than 15,500 individuals, in response to Gaza’s Hamas-run authorities, and displaced greater than three-quarters of the Strip’s 2.3 million inhabitants.

Final month, the ruling ANC backed a movement in South Africa’s parliament to droop diplomatic ties with Israel till it agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza.

“LAND ANNEXED”

“Palestinians nonetheless don’t take pleasure in totally their freedom on their land. And as an alternative their land has been annexed increasingly more, one thing that we additionally confronted in South Africa,” mentioned the ANC’s deputy chair of worldwide relations, Obed Bapela.

Israel has disputed the comparability with apartheid as a lie motivated by antisemitism, however many South Africans observe Mandela’s lead.

“That is one thing that he (Mandela) by no means compromised on and nor ought to we,” poet and writer Lebogang Mashile advised Reuters.

Some in South Africa’s Jewish neighborhood criticise the ANC’s stance, declaring that Mandela himself finally tried to construct bridges with Israel.

Historian and writer of “Jewish Reminiscences of Mandela”, David Saks, famous that Mandela was the one South African president to have visited Israel since 1994 – albeit solely after he left workplace – and that “he obtained a rapturous welcome from the Israeli public,” addressing then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak and then-President Ezer Weisman as “my associates”.

“He pointed the way in which which issues ought to have gone (diplomatically with Israel), however (they) didn’t go that approach,” Saks mentioned.