SoS Blinken reflects on Obama's visit to Nelson Mandela's cell and U.S. competing at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken reflected on Obama's visit to Nelson Mandela's cell and America’s team’s competing at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, during a visit to South Africa to seek support for America’s stance in the Ukraine conflict.

South Africa has maintained neutral stance on Russia’s war in Ukraine so far. That stance was discussed in a meeting Monday between Blinken and South Africa’s Minister of International Relations Naledi Pandor. It’s not thought that the meeting has changed South Africa’s position in a material way. Blinken will also tour Congo and Rwanda, and French president Emmanuel Macron has made similar overture to African nations, which are often proxies for conflicts between the superpower nations.

BLINKEN: Seeing our first black president, the son of a Kenyan father, and an American mother stand in the two-by-two-meter cell on Robben Island, that once jailed South Africa's first black president. Or hearing the buzz of the vuvuzelas as the US men's team played the first World Cup ever held in Africa. So some of these sounds can never be unheard and some early eliminations still hurt.