Nelson Mandela: the Islam connection


Look how Madiba artfully glosses over Muslim slave-plundering in Africa, which operated for almost 1000 years before Europeans joined in, while delivering a lecture at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. 



"Shared the ambivalence"? In other words, they enslaved only non-Muslims (most of the time). That's like saying Europeans "shared an ambivalence" about colonialism because they didn't colonise other European countries. But the great Madiba seems much less guarded about European imperialism than Islamic imperialism.


If I may, I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to those South African Muslims who died while in detention because of their resistance to apartheid; Babla Saloojee; Imam Haroun; Ahmed Timol; and Dr Hussein Hafferjee. They represent the involvement of the Muslim community in the struggle for justice and freedom, as does the presence of Muslims as Cabinet Ministers and in the highest office of our judiciary, in the new democratic political dispensation of our country.


South Africa`s vibrant Islamic heritage is a valued and respected part of our nation. It is contributing to the forging of a new South African identity. Democratic South Africa, unlike its predecessor, accords Islam equal constitutional status with all other religions. Muslim marriages are now recognised.


Madiba was eternally grateful to the Muslims in Algeria for the military training they gave him.

The Algerian Revolution represented a source of inspiration for Nelson Mandela, as he explained in his autobiography entitled "Long Walk to Freedom" that "Algeria was the closest model to the South African liberation struggle in that the (Algerian mujahideen) faced a large white settler community that ruled the indigenous majority."

During his visit to Morocco in 1961, Nelson Mandela "spent several days" with the representative of the Provisional Government of Algerian Government (GPRA), Dr Chawki Mostefai, who initiated him to the different stages of the Algerian Revolution.

Later, Mandela was invited to attend a military parade in honour of former president Ahmed Benbella after his release from prison.

"It was a guerrilla army made up of fighters who won their stripes in the heat of battles and who were war and tactics than in uniforms and parades," said Mandela.

His first direct contacts with Algerian revolutionaries impressed him and increased his determination in his future actions.

From 1965, many ANC activists came secretly to Algeria to receive military training and returned to South Africa to carry out military operations.

Algeria’s support to ANC was also showed when Algeria chaired the United Nations General Assembly in 1974 with its historical gesture consisting in expelling the representative of the apartheid regime.

When he was released on 11 February 1990, after 27 years imprisonment, Nelson Mandela insisted to come to Algiers first in recognition to Algeria’s support to the struggle of South African people against the apartheid system.


Mandela along with (on his left) Mohamed Lamari, his military instructor and future chief of staff of the Algerian armed forces.

Source: Le Figaro 

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