One day after a moving funeral service that had the world riveted, South African president, Jacob Zuma, has unveiled a giant bronze statue of Nelson Mandela in Pretoria.
The 9-metre statue of a smiling Madiba with his arms outstretched is situated at Union Buildings, the seat of government. Unveiling the monument, Mr Zuma said: “Both hands uniting the entire nation, for us to unite as a rainbow nation.” The amphitheatre of the complex was renamed Nelson Mandela Amphitheatre last week.
The event took place close to the 100th anniversary of the completion of the Union Buildings, originally built by the white minority as the headquarters of the merged English and Afrikaner governments, representing the descendants of the European colonialists. After 1948, the buildings became home to the apartheid government, which strictly imposed racial segregation and enacted policies to solely benefit the whites while disenfranchising the blacks.
The event also coincided with what is commemorated annually as Day of Reconciliation, a public holiday created after the fall of apartheid to help bridge the gap between blacks and whites. December 16 has been a day of commemoration in South Africa for over 150 years. It was initially named Day of the Covenant, honouring a victory of the early Afrikaners, mainly descendents of Dutch settlers, over the Zulus in an 1838 clash that became known as the Battle of Blood River. Some Afrikaners still mark the day today.
But it is also the anniversary of the founding of Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) — the armed wing of the now ruling African National Congress, of which Mandela was the first commander-in-chief.
After South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, the day was symbolically retained as a holiday and renamed Day of Reconciliation.
When Mandela was elected president in 1994, becoming the first black president to govern from Union Buildings, public perception of the complex shifted from it being a place of exclusion to one where the majority is represented.
