SOWETO, South Africa: French President Francois Hollande hailed anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela’s struggle for equality and forgiveness yesterday as he wrapped up a state visit to South Africa.
Hollande spent the morning in the formerly blacks-only Soweto township southwest of Johannesburg, a hotbed for resistance against the white supremacist apartheid regime which ended 19 years ago.
“Even today, there are battles to be fought so we can live together, to avoid racism and xenophobia,” said Hollande after an emotional tour of Mandela’s former house and archives.
“All this isn’t so long ago,” he said. “The battle for human dignity, for equality, for respect and tolerance... these battles live on even long after the heroes who waged them,” he added.
Hollande is currently battling a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment at home, which has sparked a wave of conservatism that handed far-right party the National Front a key by-election win on Sunday.
Accompanied by his partner Valerie Trierweiler and South African President Jacob Zuma, the French leader also visited a memorial to Hector Pieterson, a 13-year-old schoolboy shot dead by police during a 1976 uprising.
Dozens died in clashes when schoolchildren in Soweto protested being taught in Afrikaans, the language of Dutch descendants.
“It is very moving to come to Soweto, where hardly 40 years ago children died defending their freedom, their dignity,” said Hollande.
He paid a “very emotional” visit to the four-roomed house where Mandela lived before his 27-year-imprisonment for activism against the racist regime.
“Coming to this house you get the feeling of a fighter, a combatant, a militant who lived here among his own,” said Hollande after spending time at the matchbox brick house, which is now a national monument.
AFP
