A lively debate on Nelson Mandela and his legacy is under way as teenagers from across South Africa gather in Johannesburg for the week-long Nelson Mandela Debating Challenge 2018.
The challenge is the first of its kind to engage youths on Madiba’s legacy as part of the Nelson Mandela Foundation's outreach and education efforts.
The challenge is the result of a partnership between the Foundation and Tshimong, a social enterprise that trains high-schoolers in debating. It aims to encourage youths to engage with the legacy of Nelson Mandela in the year of his centenary. The challenge ends on Sunday when one of the tournament participants will be announced the winner.
Debating develops intangible, but crucial, skills, says Tshimong Managing Director Thami Pooe. “Overall we aim to give young people the chance to debate, to self-actualise through debate and to think critically. The ability to think critically is a crucial skill for the 21st century.”
The challenge pits 50 learners from schools in each of the nine provinces against each other, but also aims to show them that, in general, people have more similarities than differences.
The teenagers have been tasked with exploring Nelson Mandela’s life, times and legacy, and interrogating these topics under three broad pillars, says Pooe. These are Mandela the activist, Mandela the governor and Mandela the philanthropist.
Pooe explains that these three pillars track Mandela’s political career, through his anti-apartheid activism, his time as leader of South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy, and his post-presidential philanthropy.
The competition works like a soccer tournament, with open rounds in which each participant gets a chance to compete with every other participant and, towards the end, knock-out rounds.
In between, the 50 learners are taken on an immersive experience of Mandela’s history through various memorial venues across Gauteng, from Soweto’s Mandela House Museum, Orlando West High School and Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum, to Pretoria’s Union Buildings. Other stops include the Apartheid Museum and Alexandra, both in Johannesburg.
Debates will be held in each of these seminal spots, and the competition’s final stages will be held at the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory in Houghton, Johannesburg.
Tshimong was established in 2006 by Pooe and Bongani Masilela, both then student leaders at the University of the Witwatersrand and members of the Wits Debating Union, and Busisiwe Mkhumbuzi, a student activist at the University of Cape Town.
“All we had was the skill of teaching,” says Pooe. The three harnessed this skill to start a company that taught debating at private schools, but wanted to extend their teaching to “those who can’t afford to pay R250 an hour” to be taught debating skills.
The response, says Pooe, has been “exponential”, and the sky seems the limit in this first year of the Nelson Mandela Debating Challenge.
Watch a video about the event here:
