[In the evening, Mr.
Obama entered the fray, faced with a delicate diplomatic balancing act
involving statesmanship, policy and respect for a fading hero. Mr. Obama, who
had planned weeks ago to visit Mr. Mandela during this trip, wishes to honor
the man who inspired his career in politics, mindful that he is arriving as
South Africans are sorrowful over their beloved former president’s condition.
On Saturday the White House announced that Mr. Obama would meet later in the
day with relatives of Mr. Mandela, but not visit the former leader at the
hospital.]
By Declan Walsh and Michael D. Shear
JOHANNESBURG — Nelson
Mandela always wanted to go quietly. Despite his stature as a global icon, he
sought a dignified withdrawal from public life in recent years; privately he
told aides of his desire for a quiet funeral, stripped of pomp.
That is not how it is
happening now. With Mr. Mandela in critical condition in a hospital from a
serious lung infection, and as President Obama arrived Friday for a state
visit, the country was in the grip of passions, ceremony and controversy as its
people come to terms with finally bidding Mr. Mandela farewell.
Outside the hospital
gates, South Africans of all races prayed, sang and dropped flowers for their
revered father figure. Less harmoniously, a simmering family feud over his
funeral arrangements burst into public view. A 65-year-old woman claiming to be
his illegitimate daughter stepped forward, demanding to be let into the
hospital to meet him.
In the evening, Mr.
Obama entered the fray, faced with a delicate diplomatic balancing act
involving statesmanship, policy and respect for a fading hero. Mr. Obama, who
had planned weeks ago to visit Mr. Mandela during this trip, wishes to honor
the man who inspired his career in politics, mindful that he is arriving as
South Africans are sorrowful over their beloved former president’s condition.
On Saturday the White House announced that Mr. Obama would meet later in the
day with relatives of Mr. Mandela, but not visit the former leader at the
hospital.
“I don’t need a
photo-op,” Mr. Obama said while on his way to South Africa, where he landed
just a few miles from the Pretoria hospital where Mr. Mandela has been lying in
intensive care. “Right now, our main concern is with his well-being, his
comfort, and with the family’s well-being and comfort.”
At any other time, Mr.
Obama’s arrival would have been a symbolically potent moment with resonance for
both countries: America’s first black president visiting a nation that only two
decades ago shook off the yoke of white minority rule.
But for South Africans,
their hearts, if not their eyes, were focused on something else.
“This trip is
overshadowed by Nelson Mandela’s illness,” said Justice Malala, a political
commentator and columnist. “Its impact will be blunted because people’s
attention is elsewhere.”
Some unfolding events
seemed to be exactly what Mr. Mandela had hoped to avoid. A court hearing in a
provincial town on Friday exposed a bitter family rift over arrangements for
his funeral.
Mr. Mandela has long
been painfully aware of the divides within his family, and on Friday lawyers
and magistrates confirmed that 16 Mandela relatives, led by his eldest
daughter, Makaziwe Mandela, had filed a lawsuit against a grandson, Mandla
Mandela, a tribal chief.
A report from South
Africa’s national broadcaster pointed to a macabre squabble at work: the
plaintiffs want to compel Mandla to rebury three relatives, who had been exhumed
and moved some years ago from the family graveyard at Qunu, Nelson Mandela’s
home village, back in their original graves.
The court action
appeared to stem from an argument over where Mr. Mandela should be buried.
Mandla prefers a site at the headquarters of his tribal village of Mvezo, where
Mr. Mandela was born; the rest of the family wants him to be buried at Qunu,
where he grew up.
Among some South
Africans, the government’s careful management of news about Mr. Mandela even
stoked speculation that it was somehow keeping him alive in order to facilitate
Mr. Obama’s trip. The government flatly rejected such rumors.
“Urban legend,” said Mac
Maharaj, the presidential spokesman. “That has been put to us before, and it is
wrong. People take the government’s report as accurate.”
Mr. Obama, who is
accompanied by his wife, Michelle, and their daughters, Sasha and Malia,
arrived from Senegal and was due to travel to Tanzania on Sunday. His
long-awaited African tour is intended to stress the importance of trade, not
aid, for the continent.
“Everything we do is
designed to make sure that Africa is not viewed as a dependent, as a charity
case, but is instead viewed as a partner,” he told reporters on Friday.
In South Africa, Mr.
Obama plans to salute Mr. Mandela’s life with a visit on Sunday to Robben
Island, the prison where Mr. Mandela spent 18 years in a tiny cell, now a
somber tourist attraction inhabited
mainly by penguins.
Mr. Obama’s host here
will be President Jacob Zuma, a controversial figure who in some ways
epitomizes the disappointments of the post-Mandela era.
A charismatic populist,
Mr. Zuma has attracted fire for his views — he is a practicing polygamist who
believes all women should get married — while his penchant for singing his
signature song, “Bring Me My Machine Gun,” causes some supporters to cringe.
Mr. Zuma’s reputation
has been dented by a 2006 rape trial (even though he was acquitted), corruption
accusations and his handling of the police shooting of 34 striking platinum
miners last August.
On Saturday, he will
meet with Mr. Obama to discuss economic development, security issues in Sudan
and Central Africa, and efforts to promote democracy on the continent. A day
later, on Sunday, Mr. Obama is scheduled to deliver the major speech of his
trip at the University of Cape Town, where Robert F. Kennedy made a famous address in
1966.
It is unclear whether
either side will nod to the more controversial aspects of America’s historical
engagement with South Africa: accusations that the C.I.A. helped the apartheid
police arrest Mr. Mandela in 1962, or the fact that the State Department
removed Mr. Mandela from its terrorist list only in 2008 — 15 years after he
was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Along with enthusiastic
well-wishers, Mr. Obama is expected to confront protests about his foreign
policies from a coalition of trade unionists, students, lawyers and Muslim
groups.
For South Africans the
American president’s visit was not the biggest story of the day. The tide of
public worry has focused on the Mediclinic Heart Hospital in Pretoria, where a
wall of handwritten notes and balloons has become a shrine of sorts to Mr.
Mandela.
His wife, Graça Machel,
sleeps in a room nearby, remaining far from public view. In recent days,
visiting relatives have emerged from the hospital with often worrisome news. “I
won’t lie, it doesn’t look good,” Makaziwe Mandela said on Thursday.
But on Friday Mr.
Mandela’s former wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela offered a note of hope. He was
showing “great improvement” compared with a few days earlier, she told
reporters.
Tension over the intense
news media coverage at the hospital, stoked by criticism from the Mandela
family, continued on Friday. The police detained a South African filmmaker who
flew a radio-controlled helicopter, with a camera mounted underneath, over the
scene.
Despite his stated
desire for a quiet goodbye, Mr. Mandela has long been used to the idea of
leveraging his celebrity in the service of his struggle for freedom, said Mr.
Malala, the political analyst.
“He was always someone
who understood the value of spectacle,” he said. “The liberation struggle
needed a face, a symbol. And he understood that was the price that had to be
paid.”
Rick Lyman contributed reporting from
Johannesburg, Lydia Polgreen from New York and Alan Cowell from London.
