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(Reuters) - 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 center 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
realization 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.
(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason and Mark Felsenthal; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Pascal Fletcher)
Source:reuters.com
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