On behalf of our Founder, our Trustees, Chairperson of the Board and staff we would like to offer our condolences to the family and comrades of the late Ben Bella.
The former freedom fighter and former President of Algeria passed away on 11 April at the age of 95.
Ben Bella showed his solidarity to South Africa’s liberation struggle by offering his support in 1962 to the newly-formed armed wing of the African National Congress, Umkhonto we Sizwe.
On his secret underground mission in 1962 to receive military training, Nelson Mandela visited Morocco where he met Ben Bella the then-leader of Algeria’s National Army of Liberation (ALN).
Together they visited the ALN training camp in Oujda Morocco. This is where Mr Mandela had his first military training.
In his now famous Speech from the Dock on 20 April 1964 in the Rivonia Trial, in which he and seven comrades were sentenced to life imprisonment for sabotage, Mr Mandela spoke of his 1962 tour of African countries:
“My tour was a success. Wherever I went I met sympathy for our cause and promises of help. All Africa was united against the stand of White South Africa ... In Africa I was promised support by such men as Julius Nyerere, now President of Tanganyika; Mr. Kawawa, then Prime Minister of Tanganyika; Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia; General Abboud, President of the Sudan; Habib Bourguiba, President of Tunisia; Ben Bella, now President of Algeria; Modibo Keita, President of Mali; Leopold Senghor, President of Senegal; Sekou Toure, President of Guinea; President Tubman of Liberia; and Milton Obote, Prime Minister of Uganda. It was Ben Bella who invited me to visit Oujda, the Headquarters of the Algerian Army of National Liberation, the visit which is described in my diary, one of the Exhibits.”
The encounter remained with Mr Mandela for many years and in an 8 July 1985 letter to his friend Hilda Bernstein he wrote from Pollsmoor Prison:
“The mind goes back to ’62 when I listened to the experiences of Ben Bella’s colleagues, which were very informative. In some of these discussions I faced youngsters, some barely in their twenties, but who spoke as veterans and with authority on vital issues on which, to say the least, I was a mere amateur.”