Barack Obama arrives in South Africa today but is, sadly, \unlikely to see Nelson Mandela’
Nkoane Mashebane. a state official, summed it up …”In my country, when people are ill disposed, we try to give them time to recover.”
This is so sad. in “Dreams From My Father,” Obama lists Mandela as one of the male role models who shaped his view of his own absent father, who was born in Kenya. “It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.”
The two met before Obama’s election, though the ailing Mr. Mandell may have not been aware of whose hand he was shaking when candidate Obama detoured to Mandela’s hotel during a vist of the legend to the US in 2005.