"We will welcome you as a child of African heritage, and we can call the Queen of our world," said Ms. Machel, an advocate for women and children, noting that Regina Mundi means Queen in the world in Latin.
The thorny ambivalence that South Africans often show to the United States, which often is understood here as an arrogant superpower, seem to have been suspended for Mrs. Obama. South Africans have embraced it with stirring emotion since it arrived on Monday, and she has been embracing them again one by one, stop after stop.
Both the choreography of her appearances and nationally broadcast speech she gave here on Wednesday, had evoked the commonalities between the struggles of freedom of blacks in South Africa and the United States — an approach that has resonated with South Africans.
In Regina Mundi Church, which was a sanctuary and a hub Organizer for those who struggle against apartheid, as well as black churches in the United States during the civil rights movement, Mrs. Obama told the story of young people of both countries "that marched until his feet were raw, who suffered beatings and bullets and decades behind bars, who risked and sacrificed everything they had for the freedom they deserve".
"It is because of them," she said, "that" I stand here before you as first lady of the United States of America.
Donald Gips, the American Ambassador, who has cultivated friendships with a wide range of South Africans said to believe that the visit of Ms. Obama would contribute to a warming of relations between the main democracy United States and Africa.
"When I talk to people in Government, business and civil society, there is an incredible love for President Obama and first lady," he said. "This trip has solidified that."
The distrust between South Africa and the United States dates back to the cold war, when the African National Congress, South Africa's Liberation Movement, found refuge and support in the Soviet Union, while President Ronald Reagan condemned "to armed Soviet guerrillas of the African National Congress," who said, "have started new acts of terrorism."
But even after the end of apartheid, were years of tension over South Africa's approach to AIDS under former President Thabo Mbeki, who resisted the wide distribution of drugs of lifeguards and questioned the disability as the cause of the disease. American administrations also criticised what they saw as Mr. Mbeki coddling of Robert Mugabe, the autocrat in neighbouring Zimbabwe.
But the current President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, has changed the direction of the country about AIDS, pressing a major expansion of treatment for those with the disease. He is also taking a harder line with Mr. Mugabe, 87, pushing for the strengthening of the institutions that enable fair elections.
Be the first African-American in the White House has not hurt relations between the United States and South Africa, too.
In his visit, Mrs. Obama honored in Word and deed more heroic vision of South Africa itself — as the country that made a peaceful transition from white minority rule to black majority rule for 17 years.
On Tuesday morning, Gips SR. and his wife, Elizabeth, received 100 guests — "the crème de la crème of South Africa," as a guest described them — to meet Mrs. Obama in the Ambassador's residence in Pretoria.
Mrs. Obama spoke to each guest individually, the gifts, he said. Several guests have said that they were touched that Mrs. Obama cited Albertina Sisulu, a beloved mother of civilian movement who died this month to 92 years of age. And they laughed when she told them her husband was "pouty" that he had been unable to come to South Africa with it.
"People are fascinated by the fact that we have a black woman first lady," said Jay Naidoo, a member of Cabinet in the first Government of Mr. Nelson Mandela, who became a businessman and is now a philanthropist. "There is a fascination that a black couple is in the White House. It's unbelievable. "
Later Tuesday, Mrs. Obama visited the apartheid Museum and the Nelson Mandela Foundation, where Ms. Machel showed Mrs. Obama, his daughters, Malia and Sasha and her mother, Marian Robinson, Mr. Mandela letters and memorabilia.
Only later, Mr. Nelson Mandela, 92 and in frail health, granted Mrs. Obama and his sons a rare audience. Sello Hatang, a spokesman for the Nelson Mandela Foundation, described the visit as a courtesy call that included an exchange of pleasantries.
Most of the major roles of featured pictures of the front page on Wednesday of a smiling Mrs. Obama, chic in a red j.crew suit and bare legs, sloping shoulder to shoulder with a smiling Mandela Mr..
"He looked strong, he looked good, he looked ... happy," she told reporters who traveled with her to the United States.
In his speech in Regina Mundi Church, Mrs. Obama called on the youth of Africa to take on contemporary injustices that "are no less blatant" than past evils — hunger, disease, domestic violence.
And she celebrated young women who have sacrificed so that they believed: Robyn Kriel, a journalist from Zimbabwe, who was beaten and harassed by writing about corruption and human rights violations; and Grace Nanyonga, a Ugandan orphan who began cooking fish and sell them at age 13 to support her six brothers.
"Hey Grace," Mrs. Obama called. "You go, girl!"
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