Michelle Obama meets 92-year-old Mandela at his home
Special to USAfricaonline.com
Michelle Obama met former South African president Nelson Mandela in a visit at his Johannesburg home Tuesday, June 21, 2011. The meeting, which came at the start of the first lady’s weeklong official visit to Africa, was a rare one for the 92-year-old Mandela, who was hospitalized in January with an acute lung infection and has received few guests since.
Their face-to-face meeting lasted just under 30 minutes, and the pair reportedly talked about the first lady’s trip and schedule. She travels to neighboring Botswana on Friday.
Although it was the first time Mandela — a symbol of South Africa’s fight against apartheid — met Michelle Obama, he had met then-US Sen. Barack Obama, who took a two-week tour of Africa in 2006. A cell phone picture of the two men marked the occasion and is now in Mandela’s office, aides to the first lady said, according to FOX News.
The first lady was accompanied in the meeting by her mother, Marian Robinson, and daughters Malia, 12, and Sasha, 10. The group was also joined by Mandela’s wife, Graca Machel.
After leaving Mandela’s home, the first lady and her family traveled to a Johannesburg day care center where they brought about 200 books and read “The Cat in the Hat” to 25 children, AFP reported.
Their next stop was at the Apartheid Museum, which chronicles the rise and fall of white-minority rule in South Africa. The group took a 90-minute tour led by the museum’s director and chairman.
On Wednesday, Obama is slated to deliver a keynote address to a US-sponsored Young African Women Leaders Forum meeting in Johannesburg’s Regina Mundi Church, a haven for political activists during the apartheid era. She took a photo Tuesday with 75 young women who are participating in that forum, AFP said.
On Thursday, she is scheduled to make a trip to Robben Island, where Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years, and meet Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu in Cape Town. ref: wire services/newscore/afp/
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