Obama ‘humbled’ by Mandela prison visit

SOUTH AFRICA: President Barack Obama was “humbled” by a visit to the old cell of a now critically ill Nelson Mandela, as he urged a young generation of Africans to take up his hero's mantle Sunday.

The US leader lauded Mandela and other anti-apartheid inmates of Robben Island who “refused to yield” in the face of racist white minority rule, paying 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 anti-apartheid activists -- including Mandela -- endured hours of backbreaking toil on this Atlantic outcrop.

After staring out the barred window of the small damp cell where Mandela spent two thirds of his 27 years in prison, 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.

AFP