Making Reading Fun: September

On Saturday 21 September 2024, we hosted about 50 children from M.C. Weller and Ekhukhanyiseni Primary Schools in Alexandra, Johannesburg, for the Making Reading Fun programme. This was done in collaboration with the Vincent Tshabalala Education Trust.

The children engaged with the permanent exhibition on the "Life and Times of Nelson Mandela". Then, they saw the 4-part comic legacy series on Nelson Mandela. This was followed by a selective reading of the children’s version of Mandela’s autobiography Long Walk to Freedom interspersed with a quiz testing the children on what they had learnt about Madiba.

Part of the fun was designing a t-shirt to represent the legacy of Nelson Mandela facilitated by Yolandi Burger from the University of Loughborough. The best design will be displayed on the "Named After" Nelson exhibition portal and incorporated into the exhibition as it travels to various destinations after the showing at the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory.

Razia Saleh, Head of Archive and Research at the Foundation, told the children that uTata Madiba wrote his own story and that when they grow, they should write their own story in a book and draw inspiration from Madiba.

Before the children departed, each child was gifted a children’s book through the kind sponsorship of Transvaal VC. Khutso Nkadimeng of Transvaal VC shared with the children that reading was the cornerstone of education and a better life.

He shared his hopes that the children would read the books and swap them with each other. In a year's time, he does not want to see a clean, unread book from the day. "It must have signs that the children read and enjoyed the stories within the book," he went on.