Just two weeks after being released from prison in 1990, Nelson Mandela flew to Zambia to meet with African leaders who had supported his fight against South Africa’s apartheid system of forced racial segregation. Among them was Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
“Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians,” declared Mandela upon winning the historic South African elections without distinction of race in 1994, three years after the end of the apartheid system that imposed a series of differentiated rights for whites and blacks in South Africa. .
The African National Congress (ANC), Mandela’s party and currently the governing group in South Africa, has maintained its leader’s pro-Palestinian cause over the years, repeatedly comparing the policies of Israel in Gaza and the West Bank with the apartheid regime that the African country experienced between 1948 and 1992.
For South African human rights lawyer Thamsanqa Malusi, interviewed by the AP agency, the experience under apartheid of many members of the South African government could have influenced the genocide lawsuit against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), imposed by South Africa. on January 11, 2023.
The close relations between South Africa and Palestine have been evident since the start of the war in Gaza. Under criticism from the opposition, last month several senior ANC officials received three Hamas officials in South Africa, including the group’s top representative in Iran, on the occasion of a ceremony for the tenth anniversary of the death of Nelson Mandela. On Wednesday, the eve of the trial, Palestinians in the West Bank city of Ramallah gathered around another statue of Mandela, waving Palestinian and South African flags and holding signs reading: “Thank you South Africa.”
Beyond the commitment to the Palestinian cause, the accusation against Israel also represents a strategic move for the ANC. Mandela’s party could be reaffirming its pro-Palestinian position in view of the elections in May and August, in which for the first time in its history, the ANC risks losing its parliamentary majority, amid a bleak socio-economic context.
The ANC sees in this call “a basis to recover a primacy lost in the last 30 years, with a governance that progressively abandons its principles,” explains Sara Gon, from the Institute of Race Relations think tank, cited by AFP.
South Africa is home to the largest Jewish community in sub-Saharan Africa. But the country has a much larger Muslim population, some of whose members might welcome the move against Israel.
Pretoria could also gain ground on the international stage with its approach, according to analyst Sara Gon. As a member of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), South Africa sees this group as a counterweight to the world order dominated by the United States and Europe. South Africa has actively supported the expansion of the bloc, especially to include Iran, Israel’s great rival.
The ANC has been accused of hypocrisy in this case, since on several occasions it has ignored orders from international courts. In 2015, the government refused to detain then-Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir during a visit to South Africa in 2015, despite being under arrest warrant over genocide accusations by the International Criminal Court.
South Africa has also maintained strong ties with Russia and President Vladimir Putin since the invasion of Ukraine, overlooking an ICC indictment against Putin for alleged war crimes in relation to the kidnapping of children in Ukraine.
