A group of 18 elderly South Africans — including a woman from Limpopo who is reportedly 134 years old — met former president Nelson Mandela at his offices in Johannesburg on Friday.
Centenarian ”Koko” Moloko Temo, from Mohadi ga Manthata village, was accompanied by her 89-year-old daughter, Eveline, the Nelson Mandela Foundation said in a statement.
Temo, who was apparently born on July 4 1874, found it more comfortable to sit on the floor rather than in her wheelchair and sang a special birthday song she had composed for Mandela, who turned 90 on July 18.
According to a report in the Star in 2005, ”Temo received an identity book from the Department of Home Affairs in 1988 that says her year of birth had been determined by piecing together what she told them was happening when she was a child. Specifically, she gave the disused name of a hospital near her home.”
The South Africa Olde Person’s Forum’s visit was the idea of Masindi Wilson Mufamadi from Vhembe District, in Limpopo.
”I am so happy, I will sleep nicely. It is my day today [Friday]. Its all right, I can die today, I don’t care,” said Mufamadi, who lived in Alexandra in the 1950s and first met Mandela when he was a lawyer at Chancellor House in Johannesburg.
The 18 cheered, ululated and sang for Mandela, then presented him with gifts, including a portrait of himself painted on the skin of a goat from Ethiopia ”because he trained to be a guerrilla in Ethiopia”, said Tom Boya, an executive member of the forum.
He was referring to the period in 1962 when Mandela visited various African countries to raise support for the African National Congress and its military wing, Umkhonto weSizwe, the foundation said. — Sapa