SYMBOLISM will hang heavy this weekend when Barack Obama visits Soweto, the cradle of South Africa’s black liberation struggle, and Robben Island, the prison where Nelson Mandela languished for years, plotting its rebirth.

Yet despite the historic affinity between the civil rights and anti-apartheid movements, the first African-American president should not expect red-carpet treatment from all South Africans. Workers, students and Muslim groups are among those determined to give Obama a bumpy landing when he descends on Africa’s biggest economy.

“NObama” is the cry from the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African Communist party, which have called for “all workers” to join mass protests, including a march on the US embassy in Pretoria, on Friday. Academics and students have vowed to boycott the University of Johannesburg’s award of an honorary law doctorate to Obama. The Muslim Lawyers’ Association has called for the president to be arrested as a war criminal.

While these may appear fringe group stunts that US presidents face all over the world, South Africa is an unusual case. Cosatu and the Communist party form a “tripartite alliance” with the governing African National Congress (ANC) and expect to be heard.

Obama is a target for those who prefer to blame South Africa’s malaise of inequality and joblessness on global capitalism rather than the ruling ANC.

Bongani Masuku, Cosatu’s international relations secretary, said: “Obama is perpetuating American foreign policy. The US is an empire run on behalf of multinational companies and the ruling class of America. US foreign policy is militarising international relations to sponsor and make their own weapons.”

Many in Africa had impossibly high hopes for Obama, the son of a Kenyan. But Masuku added: “I’m not disappointed because I didn’t expect anything. It’s not about the individual; it’s not about the race he came from. It’s about the class he represents. It’s like he’s the gatekeeper for white monopoly capital. He promised things we knew he wouldn’t be able to do.”

That view extends to members of the revered struggle generation. Denis Goldberg, who stood trial with Mandela in 1963-64 and was sentenced to life in prison by the apartheid regime, said: “I don't like the idea of Guantanamo Bay; I think this is reprehensible.

“The unending assumption of depending on Chinese credits to finance your wars elsewhere - I think it’s outrageous what’s going on. I don’t have final answers but we need to ask questions of the big powers - all of them.”

On the surface, relations are cordial and have improved since George Bush and Thabo Mbeki, though Washington’s intervention in Libya alienated many here. But while many young South Africans were caught up in “Obama-mania” five years ago, those with longer memories bitterly recall Ronald Reagan’s failure to oppose apartheid.

ANTI-AMERICANISM: Tom Wheeler, a former South African diplomat who began work in Washington just before the Kennedy assassination 50 years ago, said: “There’s a gut anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism that lurks in some of the communities. It may be a hangover from the days when a lot of ANC people travelled to the Soviet Union, and America was regarded as the great colonialist.”

A demonstration is planned for the University of Johannesburg’s Soweto campus on Saturday, where the president will meet young African leaders in a “town hall” event. With first lady Michelle and their daughters, he will then visit Robben Island and meet retired archbishop Desmond Tutu, never shy of speaking his mind on Western warmongering.

Perhaps the only living South African more famous than Tutu is Mandela, who is 94 and back in hospital with a recurring lung infection. Obama has only met him once, in a Washington hotel in 2005.

Obama’s three-nation tour, starting in Senegal on Wednesday, is only his second to sub-Saharan Africa as president, and his first solely to the continent, after a fleeting visit to Ghana in 2009. Rhodes admitted that Africa had been “under-represented” in Obama’s travel to date and said trade and investment would top the agenda. “What we hear from our businesses is that they want to get in the game in Africa. There are other countries getting in the game in Africa - China, Brazil, Turkey. And if the US is not leading in Africa, we’re going to fall behind in a very important region.”

But some analysts believe Obama’s absence speaks volumes about how his administration has treated Africa.

Steven Friedman, of Rhodes and Johannesburg universities, said: “One of the great ironies of the debate about how we should receive Barack Obama is that, while a lot of South Africans are very sympathetic to him because he’s the first African-American president, “I don't think that it’s unkind to say that he’s done absolutely nothing for this continent. In some respects, George Bush did more for Africa than Barack Obama”.

BY arrangement with The Guardian