On a political and sentimental tour of the continent of his father, American Senator Barack Obama paid tribute on Wednesday to South Africans’ fight for freedom, saying they taught lessons to the world and helped inspire his own political career.
Obama, the only black lawmaker currently in the United States Senate, toured Soweto, the township where white rulers tried to confine by night the blacks who worked in their homes, offices and mines by day.
The senator, who is one of the Democratic Party’s rising stars and is often mentioned as a possible future president, began a two-week tour of Africa on Sunday with a visit to Nelson Mandela’s former prison island. The trip will also include a visit to his father’s home in Kenya.
On Wednesday he visited South Africa’s Hector Pieterson Museum, built on the site where peaceful child protesters were gunned down by police 30 years ago in an attack that awakened the world to the brutality of the apartheid regime.
Speaking at the museum, Obama said he became involved in politics to fight for divestment of US interests in apartheid-era South Africa.
”If it wasn’t for some of the activities that happened here, I might not be involved in politics and might not be doing what I am doing in the US,” he said.
Obama, who was 15 at the time of the 1976 Soweto Uprising that gave renewed impetus to a demoralised fight for black rule, said the event also highlighted the importance of young people in politics.
Obama says he hopes his trip will bring new light to Africa’s importance on the world stage, especially to the war on terrorism and in developmental aid.
His six-nation itinerary was made shorter after a request from the US Embassy in the Democratic Republic of Congo that he cancel a planned visit there because of post-election fighting between supporters of rival presidential candidates.
Aides said the senator would also scrap a visit to Rwanda and travel directly on Thursday to Kenya, then on to Djibouti and Chad.
Wednesday’s most-moving moment came at the Hector Pieterson Museum, named after the 13-year-old who was the first and youngest victim of the 1976 police crackdown.
Obama put his arm around the slain boy’s sister, Antoinette Sithole, as they stood before the iconic picture of her running and screaming alongside a friend carrying her brother’s body.
”All of us drew inspiration from what happened here, all of us wept when we saw some of the deaths, including Hector’s,” Obama said. — Sapa-AP