By Aaron Miller-
Former U.S president, Barack Obama has called for the respect of human rights and other values under threat in an address marking the 100th anniversary of Nelson Mandela.
In a lecture at the cavernous Wanderers Cricket Stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa, Obama told a massive audience of over 10,000 people that the chaos of the world had prompted him to take a broad outlook on world affairs. Describing the times as “strange and uncertain”, adding that “each day’s news cycle is bringing more head-spinning and disturbing headlines”. Obama poignantly referred to “strange and uncertain times” of the world in a speech to honor Nelson Mandela. His speech comes a few days after his successor, Donald Trump visited the Uk and caused uproar with his intervention into Brexit issues and his praise for resigned former Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson. after his successor, Donald Trump, upbraided the US in a news conference with Vladimir Putin.
“But in the strange and uncertain times that we are in — and they are strange, and they are uncertain, with each day’s news cycles bringing more head spinning and disturbing headlines — I thought maybe it would be useful to step back for a moment and try to get some perspective, so I hope you’ll indulge me,” he said, as he launched into his speech.
Obama was heavily persuasive in his urge for people around the world to respect human rights and other values under threat in his wide ranging address to mark the 100th anniversary of anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela’s birth. Delivering his highest-profile speech since leaving office, Mr Obama’s speech in South Africa was essentially critical of many of Donald Trump’s policies, without him stating so explicitly Mr Obama called for the preservation of the ideas that Mandela worked for including democracy, diversity and good education for all.
Obama insisted that the world must recognize that governments and powerful elites were partly to blame for not delivering on the promises of the new world order. This explained why some of the world is “threatening to return to an older and more dangerous and more brutal way of doing business.”
Obama’s speech followed remarks by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, and Mandela’s widow, Graça Machel, formerly a freedom fighter and minister in Mozambique’s government.
These days “we see much of the world threatening to return to a more dangerous, more brutal, way of doing business”, Mr Obama said.
His words were greeted with cheers by a crowd of about 14,000 people gathered at a cricket stadium in Johannesburg for the speech, which was streamed online.
“Just by standing on the stage honouring Nelson Mandela, Obama is delivering an eloquent rebuke to Trump,” said John Stremlau, professor of international relations at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg. He called the timing auspicious as the commitments that defined Mandela’s life are “under assault” in the US and elsewhere.
“Yesterday we had Trump and (Vladimir) Putin standing together, now we are seeing the opposing team: Obama and Mandela.”
Mr Obama is making his first visit to Africa since leaving office in early 2017 and stopped earlier this week in Kenya, where he visited the rural birthplace of his late father.
Mr Obama’s speech highlighted how the Nobel Peace Prize winner, who was imprisoned for 27 years, kept up his campaign against what appeared to be insurmountable odds to end apartheid, South Africa’s harsh system of white minority rule. Mandela, who was released from prison in 1990 and became South Africa’s first black president four years later, died in 2013, leaving a powerful legacy of reconciliation and diversity along with a resistance to inequality, economic and otherwise.
Under president Trump’s leadership, the U.S has withdrawn from the 2015 Paris climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal while trying to undercut the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare. Trump has actively gone out of his way to do the opposite of many of the policies instituted by Obama, ignoring the disappointment it has caused. The American president is a strong follower of his convictions regardless of mass opposition, leaving sour tastes in the mouth of his many critics. He will be judged on the wisdom or errors of his policies.Obama’s words of wisdom will not fall on deaf ears, but don’t expect President Trump to implement any of them.