Barack Obama is scheduled to deliver the annual Nelson Mandela lecture in South Africa in a rare appearance since he stepped down as President.
The two men were the first Black presidents of their countries. Mr Obama has said he was “one of the countless millions who drew inspiration from Nelson Mandela’s life”.
Mandela drove the battle against white minority control in South Africa. He was detained for 27 years before being elected as the first Black president in 1994.
As an understudy, Obama called the battle against politically-sanctioned racial segregation “a struggle that touches each and every one of us”, and urged his college to drop its interests in South Africa.
The highly anticipated speech by the former United States president is as a rule live-spilled from Johannesburg by the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
Its concentration will be “creating conditions for bridging divides, working across ideological lines, and resisting oppression and inequality”.
Past speakers at the occasion include US business visionary and philanthropist Bill Gates, French market analyst Prof Thomas Piketty, previous Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Kenyan Nobel laureate and political lobbyist Wangari Maathai, ex-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and previous US President Bill Clinton.
