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Obama speech to mark 100 years since Mandela’s birth
JOHANNESBURG, July 17, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Former US president Barack Obama
will deliver a speech to a crowd of 15,000 people in South Africa on Tuesday
as the centrepiece of celebrations marking 100 years since Nelson Mandela’s
birth.
Obama has made relatively few public appearances since leaving the White
House in 2017, but he has often credited Mandela for being one of the great
inspirations in his life.
He will deliver the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture at a cricket stadium in
Johannesburg in an address which will urge young people to fight to defend
democracy, human rights and peace.
Mandela, who died in 2013, remains a global icon for his long struggle
against white-minority apartheid rule and for his message of peace and
reconciliation after being freed following 27 years in prison.
Obama met Mandela only briefly in 2005 but gave a eulogy at his funeral
saying Mandela “makes me want to be a better man” and hailing him as “the
last great liberator of the 20th century”.
Tuesday’s speech comes on the eve of “Mandela Day” — his birthday, which
is marked around the world every year on July 18.
The “Mandela 100” anniversary has triggered a bout of memories and
tributes to the late anti-apartheid leader, as well as a debate over his
legacy and South Africa’s fate since he stepped down in 1999.
– Legacy threatened? –
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has said he would mark the day by
donating half his salary to charity to honour “the great sacrifices he made
and his tireless commitment to improving the lives of the most vulnerable.”
But F.W. de Klerk, the former president who shared the Nobel Peace Prize
with Mandela in 1993, told AFP: “I’m convinced that President Mandela would
be deeply concerned, as I am, about the present state of affairs in South
Africa.”
“His vision of a reconciled South Africa has become almost non-existent
within the (ruling) ANC at the moment,” he said.
Before arriving in South Africa, Obama paid a brief visit to Kenya, his
father’s home country.
He opened a youth centre run by his half-sister and visited the home of
his step-grandmother in the village of Kogelo, where his father was born and
was buried.
Obama will also host a town hall event in Johannesburg on July 18 for 200
young leaders selected from across Africa to attend a five-day training
programme.
Mandela was imprisoned under apartheid rule in 1962 and only freed in
1990, when he went on to lead the African National Congress party to victory
in the first multi-race elections in 1994.
The anniversary includes a string of other events such as a walk in
Johannesburg led by Mandela’s widow Graca Machel, the release of letters
Mandela wrote from his prison cell and the printing of a commemorative
banknote.
BSS/AFP/MSY/1112 hrs