Senior Hamas officials joined Nelson Mandela’s family on Tuesday to commemorate the 10th anniversary of his death and shine a spotlight on the Gaza conflict.
South Africa has severely denounced Israel’s reaction to the unprecedented October 7 Hamas strikes, which triggered a conflict in which hundreds died.
Mandela, who died in 2013 at the age of 95, considered establishing a Palestinian state one of his principal international objectives after becoming South Africa’s first black president.
When the Mandela family paid respect to the anti-apartheid icon, Hamas leaders were among those who laid a wreath.
Before the wreath-laying ceremony at the Union Buildings, Mandela’s grandson, national assembly member Mandla Mandela, helped organize a two-day seminar on the Palestinian-Israel issue.
Palestinians attending the conference and anniversary included Basem Naim, a former Hamas health minister in Gaza, and Khaled Qaddoumi, the terrorist group’s representative in Iran.
“We were waiting to gain first-hand experience of the daily atrocities that are being carried out in Gaza,” Mandla Mandela told national broadcaster SABC.
“It was a real experience for them to be in South Africa and learn from our experience as we had to face one of the most brutal apartheid regimes on the continent and we were able to defeat it.”
He said his grandfather considered a Palestinian state “the great moral issue of our time” and added: “We are carrying on where he left off.”
Mandla Mandela is a member of the ruling African National Congress, which endorsed a national assembly resolution last month asking for the closure of the Israeli embassy and the suspension of diplomatic relations in protest of the war.
South Africa has also officially requested that the International Criminal Court examine Israel’s “war crimes” in Gaza, as described by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Israel claims that 1,200 people were killed on October 7 when Hamas fighters stormed the border. According to the Hamas government, almost 16,000 people have perished as a result of Israel’s military assault on Gaza since then.
Israel, which has rejected similarities to apartheid, did not send a senior official to Mandela’s funeral in 2013.