In commemoration with Nelson Mandela International Day, the South African High Commission in partnership with Nelson Mandela Institution, Fountain of Joy and Comfort Foundation and other partners will on Monday, July 18, launch a 67-minutes community work in IDPs camp in Abuja.
The 67-minute, represents one minute for every year Mandela gave to his struggle for equality for the South African people.
Other activities outlined in honour of the late former South African president include, handover of a block of six classrooms, football match and book reading at the New Kuchingoro IDP camp in Abuja.
The South African high commissioner, LLA Mnguni and the representatives of other local partners will be part of the officials to unveil the programme and will make other donations such as drinking water, food items, clothing, generators amongst others.
TheLeaderng.com gathered that the South African High Commission and its partners have adopted the donation of a Skills Development Centre, in which people in the IDP camps, particularly the youth, would be taught tailoring, sewing, beadwork, woodwork, welding, painting, arts and craft etc. to enhance their skills and use the same to earn a living.
The late global leader ones said, “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
It would be recalled that the late Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician, and philanthropist, who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country’s first black chief executive, and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid through tackling institutionalised racism and fostering racial reconciliation. Politically an African nationalist and democratic socialist, he served as President of the African National Congress (ANC) party from 1991 to 1997.
A Xhosa born to the Thembu royal family, Mandela attended Fort Hare University and the University of Witwatersrand, where he studied law. Living in Johannesburg, he became involved in anti-colonial politics, joining the ANC and becoming a founding member of its Youth League. After the Afrikaner minority government of the National Party established apartheid – a system of racial segregation that privileged whites – in 1948, he rose to prominence in the ANC’s 1952 anti-apartheid Defiance Campaign, was appointed superintendent of the organisation’s Transvaal branch, and presided over the 1955 Congress of the People. Working as a lawyer, he was repeatedly arrested for seditious activities and, with the ANC leadership, was unsuccessfully prosecuted in the Treason Trial from 1956 to 1961. Influenced by Marxism, he secretly joined the South African Communist Party (SACP). Although initially committed to non-violent protest, in association with the SACP he co-founded the militant Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1961, leading a sabotage campaign against the government. In 1962, he was arrested, convicted of conspiracy to overthrow the state, and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia Trial.
Mandela served 27 years in prison, initially on Robben Island, and later in Pollsmoor Prison and Victor Verster Prison. Amid international pressure and growing fear of a racial civil war, President F. W. de Klerk released him in 1990. Mandela and de Klerk negotiated an end to apartheid and organised the 1994 multiracial elections, in which Mandela led the ANC to victory and became president. Leading a broad coalition government, which promulgated a new constitution, Mandela emphasised reconciliation between the country’s racial groups and created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses. While continuing with the former government’s economic liberalism, his administration introduced measures to encourage land reform, combat poverty, and expand healthcare services. Internationally, he acted as mediator in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial and served as Secretary General of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1998–99. Declining a second presidential term, he was succeeded by his deputy, Thabo Mbeki. Mandela became an elder statesman, focusing on charitable work in combating poverty and HIV/AIDS through the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
Mandela was a controversial figure for much of his life. Critics on the right denounced him as a communist terrorist, while those on the radical left deemed him too eager to negotiate and reconcile with apartheid’s supporters. Conversely, he gained international acclaim for his activism, having received more than 250 honours, including the Nobel Peace Prize, the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Soviet Lenin Peace Prize. He is held in deep respect within South Africa, where he is often referred to by his Xhosa clan name, Madiba, or as Tata (“Father”), and described as the “Father of the Nation”.
