Unpack the past: Mandela, the keffiyeh and South Africa’s Palestine embrace

South African anti-apartheid leader and African National Congress member Nelson Mandela (C), wearing a keffiyeh, attends a meeting organised in his honour by the National Union of Algerian Youths, May 18, 1990, in Algiers [Abdelhak Senna/AFP]

In late February 1990, 16 days after his release from prison, Nelson Mandela descended the steps of a plane in Lusaka, Zambia, which was home to the African National Congress’s exiled leadership at the time. A who’s who of leaders sympathetic to the ANC cause – from Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda to Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe – greeted the anti-apartheid leader with smiles and handshakes.

But the most emotional embrace of all came from a short, stout man with his trademark keffiyeh wrapped around his head: Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Pulling the 6-foot-4-inch tall Mandela’s face down towards him, Arafat placed kisses on Mandela’s cheeks.