Obama: keep his flag flying
FORMER US president Barack Obama issued a rallying call to Africans and the world not to forsake the common humanity he said Nelson Mandela stood for and embraced.
Obama contended that South Africans should not see the wave of hope and optimism, which engulfed the country and the world following Mandela’s release from prison in 1990 as naive or misguided.
He added: “We should see in this current trend of reactionary politics that the struggle for basic justice is never truly finished.
“So, we have to constantly be on the lookout and fight those who seek to elevate (themselves) by putting someone else down,” he said.
“We also have to actively resist... the notion that basic freedoms like dissent or for women to fully participate in society, the rights for minorities to equal freedoms, the right for people not to be beaten up and jailed because of their social orientation should not concern us. We have to remember to say: ‘Well, that does not apply to us.’”
Obama’s message was designed to foster a shared love and common humanity among all people.
He delivered the 16th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture, in partnership with the Motsepe Foundation, to a 15 000-strong audience at Wanderers Stadium in Joburg yesterday.
Other speakers included President Cyril Ramaphosa, Madiba’s widow Graça Machel and Patrice Motsepe, founder and chairperson of the Motsepe Foundation. Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille also attended the gathering.
Adding to his message, Obama railed against corruption, a point that was cheered loudly by the throngs of attendees. In his hour-long speech Obama rebuked nationalism, xenophobia as well as racial prejudice, among others.
“Embracing our common humanity does not mean we have to abandon our unique ethnic, national and religious identities. Madiba never stopped being proud of his tribal heritage; he didn’t stop being proud of being a black man, of being a South African. But he believed, as I believe, that you can be proud of heritage without denigrating those of a different heritage,” Obama said.
Ramaphosa also stressed the need to join the fight against corruption – using Mandela’s love for humanity – adding that his much-publicised “Thuma Mina” (send me) mantra was akin to “Madiba sending all of us to deal with corruption, and to root it out of South African soil”.
“His (Mandela’s) most enduring accomplishment was to teach us what it means to be human,” Ramaphosa said.
“He taught us to strive, he taught us to struggle, strive and to serve, and to do so selflessly.”
Ramaphosa said South Africa did not only celebrate Obama as the 44th president of the US because he was a son of the continent, but also because he possessed many of the values that “embodies our Struggles for liberation”.
“In Obama we found a brother, a kindred spirit,” he said. Machel said Madiba’s centenary was an opportunity to celebrate him “in all his incredible uniqueness” and to celebrate him as a representative of a broader collective leadership that had led South Africa and South Africans to freedom.
She called on young people to take inspiration from Mandela’s life so that they created a world in which all lived in a way that respected and enhanced the freedom of others.