ROBBEN ISLAND, South Africa (AFP) ― President Barack Obama was “deeply humbled” by a visit Sunday to the cell where a now critically ill Nelson Mandela spent years as a prisoner, as he urged a young generation of Africans to take up his hero’s mantle.
The U.S. leader lauded Mandela and other anti-apartheid inmates of Robben Island who “refused to yield” in the face of racist white minority rule, as he paid homage to the ailing icon he was unable to see in hospital.
Obama, accompanied by his wife Michelle and young daughters Sasha and Malia, visited the bleak lime quarry where 34 anti-apartheid leaders ― including Mandela ― endured hours of backbreaking work on the rocky outcrop in the Atlantic Ocean.
After staring out the barred window of the small damp cell where Mandela spent two thirds of his 27 years in prison, and contracted tuberculosis, Obama took a few minutes to write a note in the visitors book.
“On behalf of our family we’re deeply humbled to stand where men of such courage faced down injustice and refused to yield,” he wrote.
“The world is grateful for the heroes of Robben Island, who remind us that no shackles or cells can match the strength of the human spirit.”
Obama later made Mandela the keystone of an address urging students at the University of Cape Town and elsewhere across the vast continent to make a difference.
“I took my first step in politics because of South Africa,” he said, recalling his attachment to the anti-apartheid movement in the 1970s as a student in California.
Echoing Robert Kennedy’s call for non-violent change that was made in the same wood panelled hall half a century ago, Obama urged the students to help shape a continent that is moving forward apace.
He recounted Kennedy’s electrifying words that June day in 1966.
“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.”
“And crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
Obama said leaders like Mandela and Kennedy were a challenge to him “but more importantly they stand as a challenge to your generation.”
“They tell you that your voice matters, your ideas, your willingness to act on those ideas, your choices can make a difference.”
“If there is any country in the world that shows the power of human beings to affect change, this is the one.
”You have shown us how a prisoner can become a president.“
While Obama acknowledged that Africa is moving forward, he said more work needed to be done.
”There is no question that Africa is on the move, but it is not moving fast enough for the child still languishing in poverty... It’s not moving fast enough for the protester who is beaten in Harare, for the woman who is raped in eastern Congo,“ he said to a warm reception from the packed auditorium.
koreaherald@heraldcorp.com
