As the country grapples with unemployment, hunger and poverty, South Africans should recommit to the example of the late former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela.
This is according to Mandela’s grandson Mandla as the Nelson Mandela Foundation and many NGOs prepare to commemorate the Struggle hero’s birthday on July 18.
On Mandela Day itself, citizens are encouraged to spend 67 minutes of their time in service to others.
The number 67 is the number of years that Nelson Mandela spent fighting for justice, equality and human rights for all.
This year’s Mandela Day will be celebrated against the backdrop of corruption, a record unemployment rate and it coincides with the one year commemoration of the deaths of more than 300 during the July riots in parts of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.
This year’s Mandela Day theme is “Do what you can, with what you have, where ever you are”.
Mandla told Weekend Argus: “Nelson Mandela International Day serves as a timely reminder of what makes us quintessentially human.”
He added: “We exist for and because of others and the best expression of our humanity is when we serve and live to serve others.
“We must recommit to serve our communities languishing under poverty, hunger and unemployment.“
Madiba died after a long illness at the age of 95 at the end of 2013. He transcended race barriers during the apartheid regime.
Mandela, who served several years in penurious exile for trying to emancipate South Africa from white minority rule, according to his grandson, would want to see a new cadre of leadership in South Africa, one that is not “self serving”.
Mandela’s foundation will on Monday have a press briefing with more details of the celebration.
“For the Nelson Mandela Foundation, our focus and messaging will be based on promoting community and home-based gardens, supporting fruit and indigenous tree planting, and creating awareness of the intersections between food security and climate change,” the foundation said.
“Let us all emulate the servant leader we loved by becoming servant leaders ourselves – Madiba change-makers,” it added.
“By becoming someone who makes every day a Mandela Day by taking action against poverty, you can show others that actions speak louder than words.”
The foundation further said: “Nelson Mandela saw himself first and foremost as a servant of South Africa’s people, to whom he felt he owed a duty, and who he led by example.”
Professor Sipho Seepe said Mandela would not have been proud on the current state of South Africa.
“He would definitely not have been proud,” Seepe.
“Mandela will be very disappointed, because right now you have a party that is stripped of any revolutionary.
“You have the judiciary that lacks any form of integrity in the eyes of the people. You have a country whose President whose focus is on doing business than concentrating on matters of the state. Load shedding is now the New Dawn.”