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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 July 1999 Issue No. 436 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 July 1999 Issue No. 436
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Special Interview Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Reminiscences of Africa's struggle
By Hoda Abdel-Nasser"You have a very famous father," Mandela said as he ushered me in. "He made a tremendous impact on the liberation struggle in Africa. Remember the radical group of African states known in the 1960s as the Casablanca Group -- Egypt, Libya, Morocco, the Algerian FLN, Ghana, Guinea and Mali? Those were the progressive nations, who insisted on a unified political machinery to plan economic development and assist the liberation process. Then there was the Monrovia Group, who advocated a gradualist approach towards liberation and unification. They tended to have close ties with the colonial powers. Nasser was instrumental in cementing ties between Arab Africa and Africa south of the Sahara. Nasser's Egypt spearheaded the liberation struggle."
But Nasser's attempts to build bridges did not always succeed, since "there was much hostility to Arabs south of the Sahara. At the time of the All-African People's Conference in Accra, Nkrumah invited several representatives from North Africa such as the revolutionary leader and trade unionist Ben Barka who had fled Morocco after being sentenced to death, as well as members of the Cairo-based Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organisation."
Mandela recalled attending another meeting in East Africa, chaired by the former Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda and attended by delegates from Zanzibar, "who were very bitter about Arab participation in the conference. I was taken aback. 'Now they are coming to interfere with our revolution. They have no right to come here,' some black African delegates angrily said. I told them that Egypt has the biggest army in Africa, that we have revolutionaries of the calibre of Ben Barka amongst us who has come here for inspiration. I realised for the first time the tension between the Arab north and Africa south of the Sahara."
"Unfortunately I never actually met Nasser. But he had a tremendous influence on the anti-apartheid and national liberation struggles in Africa. In those days, Egypt was of great symbolic value to us. Our relationship with the Egyptian leadership was warm. Some of our men had trained in Egypt. Some of our people were stationed in Cairo. At that time, Cairo was a very important city indeed. It had many embassies and representative offices of liberation movements. Many Arab states, including Egypt, gave us financial support. Egypt had the biggest army in Africa, and was the only country then to have a viable navy.
Nelson Mandela and Hoda Abdel-Nasser
"When Nasser went to Bandung, Indonesia, in 1965, his oratory skills were impressive. He had a charismatic personality. In his speech at the United Nations in 1960, he had already taken an admirable stand against apartheid. Together with Nehru, Nkrumah, Sukarno and Tito, he went on to lay the foundations of the Non-Aligned Movement."
