50 Cent Meets Nelson Mandela

50 is [in South Africa] to see and learn about the region and continent in a way that perhaps he didn’t appreciate the last time he was here, in 2004. This morning, for example, we rushed to Hector Pieterson Memorial museum in Soweto to meet up with 50 and Nelson Mandela’s grandson, who was giving 50 a lesson on Apartheid and its effect on South Africa. Mandela’s grandson is the spitting image of a young Nelson, and has a lot of his grandfather’s austere diplomacy — except he’s young enough to know who 50 and Jay-Z are. After the tour, guided by Mandela’s grandson, 50 gave out 20 dollar bills to the local kids before his car got mobbed and his manager made him speed away.

The plan is for us to see 50’s show tonight in Johannesburg (which the locals call Jozi), where 80,000 people will fill up the city’s biggest indoor stadium. Tomorrow we go with 50, Lloyd Banks, and Tony Yayo to a platinum mine to see the grueling conditions that some work under for the bling that stars rock to look pretty. Again, 50 is really interested in learning about how this part of the world is connected to the everyday world in which we live in America. As one older man said to him at the Apartheid Museum earlier, “50, welcome home. This is your home!”