News
Foundation honours the memory of Chris Hani
April 9, 2008 – We at the Nelson Mandela Foundation join the rest of our nation in honouring the memory of the late Martin Thembisile “Chris” Hani who was gunned down outside his home 15 years ago.
Young and energetic, Chris Hani had a bright future in the post-apartheid South Africa he was helping to build. But this future ended on the morning of 10 April 1993 when at the age of 50, he was shot and killed by a right-wing immigrant. Thanks to a quick-thinking neighbour the assailant was soon arrested.
Foundation remembers Martin Luther King Jr
April 7, 2008 – When US civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated on 4 April 1968, Nelson Mandela was ending the third year of his life sentence for sabotage.
King’s shooting on the balcony in a hotel in Memphis Tennessee at the age of 39, sent shock waves around the world. To the news deprived political prisoners on Robben Island, the information had to come more slowly, through the network of common law prisoners.
My Way Foundation honours Nelson Mandela
April 1, 2008 - In the town of Hagenbrunn, Austria, an outdoor artwork a kilometre long is open, 24 hours a day, for people to visit. Its purpose is to encourage them to reflect on their way in life.
In Conversation With Ali Mazrui
March 30, 2008 – In the second of our “In Conversation With” series to commemorate Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday, Ali Mazrui talks with Tara Turkington about racial and religious intolerance, and current-day politics in the United States, Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa.
Foundation publishes human rights dialogue booklet
March 27, 2008 – The Nelson Mandela Foundation has just published a booklet recording the Human Rights Lecture and Roundtable Discussion held in conjunction with the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNOHCHR) on December 10, 2007.
Commemorating Human Rights Day, 2008
March 21, 2008 – “… it is important that the legal system itself be made affordable, accessible and efficient. The most elegantly drafted Human Rights are worth nothing if only the wealthy can enforce them or if remedies are subject to inordinate delays.”
– Address by President Nelson Mandela to the Workshop for Human Rights Education (Durban, September 1994)
As we mark Human Rights Day on 21 March, 2008, 14 years after our country’s first truly democratic elections, we should indeed celebrate what we have achieved since then. For example, our country’s Constitution is one of the most progressive anywhere in the world.
Perhaps we should also pause to reflect on Nelson Mandela’s words in 1994. South Africa’s freedom did not come to us as a perfect gift, complete and eternal. It was worked at over years, even decades. Now, translating into reality elegant words and noble intentions, a reality that touches and enriches the lives of all South Africans, is going to require an effort from all of us.