Col. Muammar Gaddafi seizes power in Libya

On 1 September 1969, Muammar Gaddafi seized power in Libya after a coup d'etat. Gaddafi, the leader of the Free Unionist Officers movement, overthrew the monarchical rule of King Idris, who had ruled Libya since its independence in December 1951. After his deposition the king went into exile in Egypt. In 1970, leaders of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) visited Libya to negotiate the use of Libyan territory for military training purposes for its armed wing, the Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA). In 1974 Libya permitted not just the PAC but also other South African political organizations fighting Apartheid to use Libyan territory for military training. What further encouraged Libyan support for the PAC was its alliance to Qibla, a South African Muslim guerrilla movement. Other than the PAC and Qibla, other anti-Apartheid organizations that received Libyan support were the Black People's Convention (BPC) and the South African Students Organization (SASO). Later, the ANC also began using Libya as a military training base for some of its cadres in Libya. In 1997, after the fall of Apartheid, Nelson Mandela, accompanied by Graça Machel and the Minister of Foreign Affairs Alfred Nzo, defied the international isolation of Libya and visited Muammar Gaddafi. The delegation flew from the Tunisian resort island of Djerba to the Libyan border town of Ras Adjir and then completed the 160 km journey to the Libyan capital of Tripoli by road due to an air embargo imposed on Libya by the United Nations. In 1999, Mandela successfully mediated in a long standing dispute between Gaddafi and the West, which saw Libya hand over suspects of the Lockerbie bombing for trial in the Netherlands.