US Secretary of State Blinken in South Africa on Africa tour

By MOGOMOTSI MAGOME
Associated Press

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken began his three-nation tour of Africa Sunday by visiting a museum in Soweto commemorating how South Africa’s Black youths helped to end white racist rule. Blinken’s visit to Africa is seen as part of a competition between Russia and Western powers for support from African countries over the war in Ukraine. South Africa is one of many African countries that have maintained a neutral stance on the war and have not publicly criticized Russia. After an early morning arrival, Blinken visited the Hector Pieterson memorial in Soweto township, on the outskirts of Johannesburg, which commemorates a student killed in 1976 when protesting South Africa’s regime of racial oppression, apartheid, which ended in 1994.