Nelson Mandela’s legacy of tolerance was celebrated in Johannesburg on Wednesday.
”For me, the meaning of Mandela is the idea of plurality and tolerance of ideas. That’s the biggest challenge facing our country today,” said Witwatersrand University academic Xolela Mangcu.
He was speaking at the launch of a book and photographic exhibition honouring former president Mandela before his 88th birthday on July 18. The event was at the Nelson Mandela Foundation (NMF) in Houghton.
Mangcu edited the book The Meaning of Mandela. The book is a compilation of lectures from a series hosted by the Human Sciences Research Council to celebrate Mandela’s birthday last year.
The authors of the lectures were the chair of the United States Pulitzer Prize board Henry Louis Gates Junior, American political philosopher Cornel West, and Wole Soyinka, the first African writer to win a Nobel prize.
Mangcu encouraged public lectures as a means of debate, as ”the only space where we don’t have to show a card, show an allegiance”.
He thanked Mandela for freedom.
”I cannot imagine a greater gift than that.”
Mandela attended the launch but did not address it. Later he joined in singing Happy Birthday to himself.
The exhibition Madiba: Public and Private shows works by photographers Alf Kumalo and Jurgen Schadeberg. Schadeberg’s photos are of the public images of Mandela from the 1950s, during the Defiance Campaign and in the run-up to Mandela’s imprisonment, while Kumalo’s are of Mandela’s private life, particularly of his family.
Many of Kumalo’s pictures were taken of Mandela’s growing family, to send to Mandela in jail.
NMF chairperson Professor Jakes Gerwel described the exhibition as ”a conversation between two collections”.
Kumalo said that for the photographers, the exhibition was ”one of the climaxes of our lives”.
”I’m just amazed by the honourable person Madiba is,” said Schadeberg. – Sapa