To honour and mark hundred years Since the birth of Former president and one of the struggle icon of Democratic South Africa, Scores of inter-racial people around the world volunteered and committed themselves on series charitable activities inter alia educational, art exhibit and fund-raising.
Such initiatives are a sign of the values that Nelson Mandela embodied prior to his death in 2013.
Politically, Parties represented in South African Parliament issued thier best wishes to those who went on a field day doing what the hitherto Nobel Prize winner believed in.
Democratic alliance Leader Mmusi Maimane says ” One thing that mattered to him more than anything else was looking after our children and preparing them for a better future through education. But judging by the way our children fare in international benchmark studies like the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study it is clear that our government has turned its back on young South Africans.
According to Mmusi Maimane, The ANC led government is holding back the country’s education through it education system.
Maimane says “Our failed education is part of a system that locks black children out of opportunity. If we don’t change this system, these boys and girls will forever be left poor.
We must rescue our children from the fate this ANC government has condemned them to. Our future, as a nation, depends on it. But this will not happen if we continue to let SADTU hold our schools to ransom and deprive our children from their right to a quality education.
The DA leader was at Lotanang primary school, Seshego as part of his Nelson Mandela centenary dairy.
Meanwhile, the ANC emphasized the expanded public works program as some of the initiative that Nelson Mandela wanted to use to uproot poverty in South Africa. EPWP is a state initiative that outsources unemployed unskilled residents on a contract basis to perform work around thier area.
“Mandela led the negotiations and ensured that all south Africans, black and white , have a foundation to build on after the devastation of apartheid colonialism. He led this process of rebuilding as the president of a democratic south Africa.
As he said in his inauguration statement on 10 may 1994 ” we have , at last , achieved our political emancipation.we pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from continuing bandage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination.
We succeed to take our last steps to freedom in conditions of relative peace. We commit ourselves to the construction of a complete, just and lasting Peace”.
“On his watch as president, he presided over the dismantling of apartheid institutions in government and introduced such programs as free health care to pregnant women and children under the age of 6; the expanded public works programme ; housing for the poor, in order to lay the foundation for a better life for all south Africans.
It was also on his watch that we saw the adoption of our Constitution in 1996 as well as the truth and Reconciliation commission process.” Says the African national Congress in a statement issued by spokesperson Pule Mabe.
The economic freedom fighters says “As the EFF we are delighted that the day coincides with the hearing on the amendment of section 25 of our Constitution. The leadership of the EFF will commemorate Mandela day by listening to the people, many of whom are land less and still have no access to any means of production into the country. We are committed to doing everything to ensure people get back the land.
EFF further called on people to mark this day by making thier voice heard in the public hearings. The Economic freedom have openly expostulated in multiple times that they don’t discern Mandela as an apple of the nation’s eye.
Many of them label him a sell out who self enriched himself and close networks whom they apparently allege that they went from rags to riches.
By: STEVE LEFOPHANA
