Mandela lecture: Barack Obama condemns disregard for facts
Barack Obama has used his first high-profile speech since stepping down as US President to say "you have to believe in facts".
His comments are seen as a riposte to the current US administration's use of "alternative facts".
"Without facts there is no basis for co-operation," he said at the annual Nelson Mandela lecture in South Africa.
"If I say this is a podium and you say this is an elephant, it is going to be hard for us to co-operate."
Mr Obama said that he could find common ground with people who
disagree with the Paris accord on climate change - which Donald Trump
wants to pull the US out of - if they have an argument based on fact.
But,
he added: "I can't find common ground if someone says climate change is
not happening when almost all the world's scientists say it is. If you
start saying it is an elaborate hoax, where do we start?"
A
moment later, Mr Obama told the audience of 15,000 people: "It used to
be if you caught them [politicians] lying, they said: 'Oh man'. Now they
just keep on lying."
His speech is part of events to mark 100
years since the birth of former South Africa President Nelson Mandela,
who died in 2013 aged 95.
Both men were the first black presidents of their countries.
Speaking on Tuesday in South Africa's main city, Johannesburg, Mr Obama
also said politicians using "politics of fear, resentment, retrenchment"
were rising "at a pace unimaginable just a few years ago".
Mr Obama has said he was "one of the countless millions who drew inspiration from Nelson Mandela's life".
Mandela
led the fight against white minority rule in South Africa. He was
imprisoned for 27 years before he became the country's first
democratically elected president in 1994.
As a student, Mr Obama called the fight against apartheid "a struggle that touches each and every one of us", and encouraged his university to drop its investments in South Africa.
Previous
speakers at the event include US entrepreneur and philanthropist Bill
Gates, French economist Prof Thomas Piketty, former Liberian President
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Kenyan Nobel laureate and political activist
Wangari Maathai, ex-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and former US
President Bill Clinton.
Since its beginning in 2003, global
leaders have used the lecture to speak about issues affecting South
Africa, the continent and the world.
Mr Obama and his family spent
eight days in Tanzania's famous Serengeti National Park, before Mr
Obama travelled to Kenya at the weekend to visit his ancestral home, and
now to South Africa.
BBC
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