🇿🇦 🇵🇸 South African and anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela meets PLO leader Yasser Arafat in Cairo, in 1990. In 2004, after the death of Arafat, Mandela paid tribute to the leader of the PLO: “He was an icon in the proper sense of the word. He was not only concerned with the liberation of the Arab people but of all the oppressed people throughout the world – Arabs and non-Arabs – and to lose a man of that stature and thinking is a great blow to all those who are fighting against oppression.”