Mandela @100 celebrated
Friday July 20 2018
Members of The Maharishi Institute Choir perform at the global 'Walk Together' initiative event by Nelson Mandela's group The Elders to celebrate Nelson Mandela's 100th Anniversary at Constitution Hill in Johannesburg on July 18, 2018. AFP PHOTO | GULSHAN KHAN
This year’s Nelson Mandela International Day marked 100 years since his birth.
According to the Nelson Mandela Foundation, the centenary was an occasion to reflect on his life and legacy, and to follow his call to “make of the world a better place.”
In Johannesburg, former US president Barack Obama on Tuesday delivered the main speech of the celebrations to a crowd of 15,000, recalling the “wave of hope that washed through hearts all around the world” when Mandela was released from jail in 1990.
“Through his sacrifice and unwavering leadership and, perhaps most of all, through his moral example, Mandela... came to embody the universal aspirations of dispossessed people,” Obama said.
Retired archbishop Desmond Tutu, 86, recalled fond memories of his fellow campaigner against white-minority rule and fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner.
“The most extraordinary thing about Nelson Mandela was his ordinariness. He was just a particularly fine example of humanity,” Tutu said in a video message.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, a protégé of Mandela who took office this year, said he would mark “Mandela 100” by donating half his salary to charity and called for others to do the same.
“He led us from the wilderness of conflict and oppression into the land of promise, of freedom, democracy and equality,” President Ramaphosa said.
The president spent Wednesday in Mvezo in Eastern Cape province, Mandela’s birthplace, at celebrations that included the opening of a clinic, a tree planting ceremony and distribution of blankets to elderly citizens.
Accompanied by former South Africa president Jacob Zuma, they also handed over 100 bicycles to pupils from the Mandela School of Science and Technology.
Graca Machel, Mandela’s widow, led a short walk to promote Mandela’s legacy, while the centenary was marked with the release of a new book of his prison letters and a commemorative bank note.
In Nairobi, Mandela Day was marked with the centenary of another anti-apartheid stalwart, Albertina Sisulu, who lobbied for the education and equal rights of women and children.
The Nairobi celebrations were led and hosted by South African High Commissioner to Kenya Koleka Mqulwana.
She said that the celebrations this year would run until December. Mandela died on December 5, 2013.
“We started the celebrations in Kenya last Sunday with a church service to honour the role the religious community played in ensuring that South Africa gained freedom. On Wednesday, we were at the UN headquarters in Nairobi with over 400 children who joined us in celebration.”
US artists Beyonce and Jay-Z will be among headliners at a Nelson Mandela tribute concert to be held in South Africa at the end of the year. The couple will form part of a star-studded line-up at the Mandela:100 event on December 2.
Other performers include Ed Sheeran, Chris Martin, Pharrell Williams, D’banj, Femi Kuti, Sho Madjozi, Tiwa Savage and Wizkid at the event put together by the non-profit Global Citizen network, who say the concert is the “biggest campaign on the Global Goals to end extreme poverty ever.”
- Additional reporting by Agencies