S. Africa Marks Mandela Centennial

South Africans along with former US president Barack Obama were marking the centennial of anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela’s birth on Wednesday with acts of charity in a country still struggling with deep economic inequality 24 years after the end of white minority rule. Obama met with young leaders from around Africa to mark the anniversary, a day after he delivered a spirited speech in Johannesburg about Mandela’s legacy of tolerance and criticized US President Donald Trump and his policies without mentioning him by name, AP reported. South Africans and others around the world marked the July 18, 1918 birth of Mandela with clinic openings, blanket handouts and other charitable acts. In Cape Town, numbers were painted on homes in one of the sprawling slums to help health workers locate people living with HIV and tuberculosis. But South Africans must do more to fight for Mandela’s values daily instead of engaging in symbolic gestures on his birthday, main opposition leader Mmusi Maimane with the Democratic Alliance said, adding that South Africa’s “failed education is part of a system that locks black children out of opportunity.”