Mamdani, stop hijacking Mandela’s legacy

Every July 18, South Africans and millions around the world mark Mandela Day by dedicating 67 minutes to community service—one minute for each year Nelson Mandela devoted to the struggle for freedom.

It is a day that invites every generation to reflect on Mandela’s legacy and, inevitably, to claim a part of it for themselves. But New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s keynote Mandela Day address at the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s inaugural Global Leadership Forum attempted something altogether different: It sought to remake Mandela in Mamdani’s own ideological image.

Mamdani recast Nelson Mandela as the patron saint of 21st-century activist politics, a man whose defining legacy was uncompromising solidarity with fashionable causes, particularly the Palestinians. This transforms Mandela into a moral mascot for today’s politics of absolutism.

The word “solidarity” echoed throughout Mamdani’s speech, culminating in his declaration that “solidarity is not just a value, it is a strategy.” According to Mamdani, Mandela’s enduring lesson is to stand defiantly with those deemed oppressed, reject compromise and remain steadfast against political pressure, especially when Jews are involved.

That is not the Mandela the South African Jewish community knew. Nor is it the Mandela the world came to admire.

Mandela did not become a global icon because he excelled at identifying victims and oppressors. He became one because he achieved what almost everyone thought impossible: He persuaded bitter enemies to build a future together. He believed that justice required engagement with those you disagreed with, recognizing their humanity and finding sufficient common ground to build peace. While Mandela valued solidarity, engagement was his true strategy.

For Mamdani, Mandela’s famous 1990 Ted Koppel town hall interview, held shortly after Mandela’s release from jail, represents the defining expression of Mandela’s politics of universal solidarity—i.e., standing up to Jews and the West.

Yet Mamdani fundamentally distorts the exchange. When challenged about his friendship with PLO chief Yasser Arafat, Mandela did refuse to abandon him but did not respond with defiance or denunciation. Nor did he dismiss the concerns of the Jewish community.

Instead, he said, “If a Jewish leader has any doubts about our stand, I am prepared to address them and to allay their concern. … I’m prepared to iron out any differences that might exist. But they must know what our stand is: Arafat is a comrade-in-arms, and we treat him as such.”

Mandela did not choose between principle and dialogue. He insisted on both.

True to his word, later that year he spent more than two hours meeting a delegation of American Jewish leaders in Geneva. As one participant recalled, Mandela told them, “If the test of my friendship with you is that I have to be an enemy of your enemy, then I cannot be your friend.”

Mamdani presented Mandela almost exclusively through the prism of solidarity with the Palestinians. But Mandela’s position was far more balanced and far more courageous. He never abandoned his support for the Palestinians, yet neither did he abandon Israel or South Africa’s Jewish community.

Speaking to the South African Jewish community in 1993, Mandela declared, “We recognize the legitimacy of Zionism as a Jewish nationalism just as we recognize the legitimacy of Palestinian nationalism. We insist on the right of the State of Israel to exist within secure borders, but with equal vigor support the Palestinian right to national self-determination.”

This was not an isolated statement. Mandela was never imprisoned by ideology. One of his defining strengths was his willingness to learn from anyone who had something to teach him. In his book Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela credited right-wing Zionist leader Menachem Begin’s The Revolt with helping him think through how a small movement without mountains or forests could wage an effective guerrilla campaign.

One of Mandela’s key advisers in building Umkhonto we Sizwe—the paramilitary wing of Mandela’s African National Congress—was Arthur Goldreich, a veteran of the Zionist militia the Palmach, whose experience helped shape the group’s command structure. Indeed, the organization borrowed its terminology from Begin’s Irgun. At the very moment Mandela was creating the movement that would help liberate South Africa, he was drawing lessons from Israel.

That same pragmatism shaped his international relationships. Despite his close friendship with Arafat, Mandela maintained ties with Israel, met successive Israeli leaders and visited Israel in 1999.

Contrast this with Mamdani’s approach. This year he became the first New York mayor in six decades to boycott the city’s Israel Day Parade. The march draws tens of thousands of Jewish New Yorkers and has always been attended by mayors of every political persuasion as an expression of solidarity with the community.

Recently, Mamdani publicly mused on whether he could arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should the Jewish leader attend the U.N. General Assembly in New York in September. When he realized that he had no such authority, Mamdani released a video in which he venomously attacked both Israel and its premier.

In short, Mandela practiced the politics of engagement. Mamdani practices the politics of confrontation.

Mandela’s relationship with South Africa’s Jewish community reflected his philosophy of engagement. Above all, he recognized the extraordinary contribution Jewish South Africans made to the struggle against apartheid and the building of our democracy.

As chairman of the Jewish National Fund of South Africa, I remain especially proud that Mandela partnered with JNF to establish the first park in Mamelodi, recognizing Israel’s internationally renowned expertise in forestry and environmental rehabilitation. That project captured the essence of Mandela’s leadership. He brought communities together around shared purposes because he instinctively looked for partners rather than ideological allies. He measured people by what they could contribute, not by which political tribe they belonged to.

Mandela understood something that Mamdani and his fellow activists still struggle to grasp: Peace is not achieved by shouting “genocide” or draping yourself in a keffiyeh to prove your own moral purity. Mandela did not ask, “Which side are you on?” Instead, he asked, “How do we build a future together?” That question was almost entirely absent from Mamdani’s Mandela Day speech.

The tragedy is that the Middle East does not need more speeches celebrating solidarity with one side or the other. It needs leaders with Mandela’s rare willingness to engage across ideological divides, recognize the legitimate aspirations of two peoples and make the painful compromises that peace demands.

Mandela’s legacy wasn’t about choosing sides but about bringing them together. The former is the politics of protest. The latter is the politics of peace. One wins veiled applause. The other changes the world.