SOUTH Africa on Wednesday marked 100 years since Nelson Mandela’s birth, with Barack Obama hosting a youth leadership project as archbishop Desmond Tutu led emotional tributes to the late anti-apartheid icon. Mandela’s birthday on July 18 is celebrated annually around the world with charitable works and the Nelson Mandela Foundation called for people to “take action and inspire change” in his name on the centenary year.

In Johannesburg, Obama told 200 young people attending a leadership course he has set up that Mandela had been a key inspiration in his life. “Most people around the world think of Mandela as an older man, with hair like mine,” he joked. “What people of course don’t recall is that he started as a very young man — your age — trying to liberate his country. He then inspired me.” Obama on Tuesday delivered the centrepiece address of the celebrations to a crowd of 15,000 at a cricket stadium.

Retired archbishop Desmond Tutu, 86, recalled fond memories of his fellow campaigner against white-minority rule and fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner. “The most extraordinary thing about Nelson Mandela was his ordinariness. He was just a particularly fine example of humanity,” Tutu said in a video message. “The principles on which he led his life are universal principles of love, fairness and respect of others built on understanding of the vulnerabilities that we all share.”

Machel Graca, Mandela’s widow, led a short walk to promote Mandela’s legacy, while the centenary was marked with the release of a new book of his prison letters and a commemorative bank note. Among a series of exhibitions, music festivals and sports events worldwide, a memorial stone was also unveiled at a special service in London’s Westminster Abbey.

Mandela was imprisoned under apartheid rule in 1962 and only freed in 1990, when he went on to lead the African National Congress party to victory in the first multi-race elections in 1994. He served one term as president before stepping down in 1999. He died in 2013.

Published in Dawn, July 19th, 2018