South Africa, Pretoria: Hundreds of people in the South African capital Pretoria
demonstrated on Friday against a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama,
marching near a hospital where anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela lay
critically ill.
Flying on board Air Force One from Senegal, Obama paid tribute to
Mandela who as South Africa’s first black president led the nation out
of apartheid, but said he was not seeking a “photo op” with the ailing
statesman.
Mandela, 94, has been in the Pretoria heart clinic with a lung
infection for nearly three weeks, his fourth spell in hospital in six
months.
A Nobel Peace Prize laureate like Obama, Mandela is admired around
the world as a symbol of resistance against injustice and of racial
reconciliation. His condition improved over Wednesday night but he
remained critical.
Nearly 1,000 trade unionists, Muslim activists and South African
Communist Party members marched through the capital to the U.S. Embassy
where they burned a U.S. flag in protest, calling Obama’s foreign policy
“arrogant and oppressive”.
Muslim activists held prayers in a car park outside the embassy.
Leader Imam Sayeed Mohammed told the group: “We hope that Mandela feels
better and that Obama can learn from him.”
South African critics of Obama have focused in particular on his
support for U.S. drone strikes overseas, which they say have killed
hundreds of innocent civilians, and his failure to fulfill a pledge to
close the U.S. military detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba
housing terrorism suspects.
Protesters said the first African-American president should not try to link himself to the anti-apartheid figure.
“Mandela valued human life … Mandela would condemn drone attacks and
civilian deaths, Mandela cannot be his hero, he cannot be on that list,”
said Yousha Tayob.
“TWO GREAT MEN”
A few blocks away at the Pretoria heart hospital, well-wishers paying
tribute to Mandela had words of praise for Obama, who met Mandela in
2005 when he was still a U.S. senator.
Nigerian painter Sanusi Olatunji, 31, had brought portraits of both
Mandela and Obama to the wall of the hospital, where flowers, tribute
notes and gifts for Madiba, as Mandela is affectionately known, have
been piling up.
“These are the two great men of my lifetime,” he said.
“To me, Mandela is a prophet who brought peace and opportunity. He
made it possible for a black man like me to live in a country that was
only for whites.”
During his weekend trip to Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town,
Obama is scheduled to visit Robben Island, the former penal colony where
Mandela passed 18 years of the 27 years he spent in apartheid prisons.
White House officials have said they will defer to the Mandela family on whether a visit to the hospital would be appropriate.
Obama, who has been in office since 2009, is making his first
substantial visit to Africa following a short trip to Ghana at the
beginning of his first term.
South Africans held prayer vigils outside the Pretoria hospital and at Mandela’s former Soweto home Thursday night.
But as his health has deteriorated this year, there is a growing
realisation among South Africa’s 53 million people that the man who
forged their multi-racial “Rainbow Nation” from the ashes of apartheid
may be nearing his end.
The possibility of his dying has already generated controversy among the extended Mandela clan.
A dispute between factions of the family over the anti-apartheid
leader’s proposed final resting place in the Eastern Cape went legal on
Friday when his eldest daughter and a dozen other relatives won a court
order against his grandson, Mandla.
SABC, South Africa’s state broadcaster, said the court had ordered
Mandla to return the remains of three of Mandela’s children from Mvezo,
where Mandla is now chief, to Qunu, Mandela’s ancestral home 20 km (13
miles) away. (Reuters)
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