A grandson of Nelson Mandela is named Gadaffi - a sign of how popular the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi once was in South Africa and many other African countries.
With his image of a revolutionary, Col Gaddafi inspired South Africans to fight for their liberation, funding and arming the anti-apartheid movement as it fought white minority rule.
However, he also backed notorious rebel groups in Liberia and Sierra Leone and his demise could serve as a warning to the continent’s other “big-man” rulers.
After Mr Mandela became South Africa’s first black president in 1994, he rejected pressure from Western leaders - including then-US President Bill Clinton - to sever ties with Col Gaddafi, who bankrolled his election campaign.
“Those who feel irritated by our friendship with President Gaddafi can go jump in the pool,” he said.
Instead, Mr Mandela played a key role in ending Col Gaddafi’s pariah status in the West by brokering a deal with the UK over the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.
It led to Col Gaddafi handing over Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi for trial in Scotland. He was convicted in 2001, before being released eight years later on compassionate grounds - a decision Mr Mandela welcomed.
Mr Mandela saw the Lockerbie deal as one of his biggest foreign policy achievements.
“No-one can deny that the friendship and trust between South Africa and Libya played a significant part in arriving at this solution… It vindicates our view that talking to one another and searching for peaceful solutions remain the surest way to resolve differences and advance peace and progress in the world,” he said in 1999, as he approached the end of his presidency.
“It was pure expediency to call on democratic South Africa to turn its back on Libya and [Col] Gaddafi, who had assisted us in obtaining democracy.”
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