More than 5 000 birthday messages including 523 from overseas were conveyed to telephone numbers for former president Nelson Mandela before 7am on Friday, Telkom SA reported.
Spokesperson Hans van de Groenendaal said millions of people worldwide were expected to join the quest for a world record for the most birthday wishes ever received by an individual in one day, as they called to wish Mandela a Happy Birthday.
Van de Groenendaal said Telkom was facilitating a phone-in campaign to set a Guinness Book World Record. A portion of the proceedings from all Madiba’s birthday wishes made on Telkom’s two special numbers allocated for the campaign will go to the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
The phone-in numbers for the campaign are 086 711 1885 for calls made within South Africa and +2712MANDELA for calls from the rest of the globe.
The world record attempt started on Friday at one minute past midnight and will end at midnight on Friday.
The proceeds of the phone-in campaign will be handed over to the Nelson Mandela’s Foundation at a function on Saturday.
Van de Groenendaal said all the calls will terminate on Telkom’s network.
”To manage the call traffic, Telkom has installed 100 primary rate ISDN lines, which can handle a total of 3 000 calls simultaneously.” – Sapa