For the Nelson Mandela Foundation, the month of July was dominated by two things – the unfolding of highly successful Mandela Day programming and the revealing by our Board of Trustees of its choice of a new chief executive.
Dr Mbongiseni Buthelezi.
(Image: Supplied)We are looking forward to Dr Mbongiseni Buthelezi taking up the hot seat from 1 October. Personally, I couldn’t be more delighted by the Board’s decision. My professional path has crossed that of Mbongiseni numerous times over the last fifteen years, and I know the extent to which what he will bring to the Foundation is ideal at this juncture in the institution’s history. The mandate Madiba gave us many years ago is in what I call the nexus of reckoning with pasts and the making of just futures. In many ways Mbongiseni’s career has been, precisely, about exploring this nexus and finding ways of achieving meaningful impact in it. I’m looking forward to working closely with him in the next while.
The Mandela Day campaign attracted greater support and enjoyed its largest international footprint since the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020. We are grateful to everyone who came out to honour Madiba’s birthday in the way he wanted us to. From World Bank executives in Washington to former prisoners in Nigeria, from the United Nations headquarters in New York to the streets of Hillbrow, those with resources went out into vulnerable communities and got their hands dirty. Social media interest was wider and more boisterous than I can remember – the Foundation had 532 million imprints about the campaign. Let it be said that we still have work to do in order to discourage those who join the campaign for do-gooding, grandstanding and fundraising – if we are to be true to Madiba’s wishes, our Mandela Day contributions must be geared to making good rather than looking good, to sustainable support and the sharing of resources rather than the extraction of value. We’ll get there.
A big thank you as well to the thousands of people who participated in our Mandela Day Walk and Run. There was a buoyancy of spirit at the Wanderers Stadium and out on the road that I haven’t encountered in a long time – a sense of being together, of resilience, of determination, even of renewal. Making good is our top priority, of course, but feeling good is also important. And it feels good to get out on the road, embrace wellbeing, get fit, and at the same time contribute to supporting social justice work. Being Jozi though, no surprise that the Walk and Run was shadowed by the presence of crooks who were robbing participants of their cellphones. Harsh reality is always with us. It’s a hard road. But we learn from these experiences and make the changes that are necessary.
To keeping going. To never giving up. A luta continua.
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Please look out in the next few days for our public announcement on the 2024 Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture and pencil into your diaries the afternoon of Saturday 28 September in anticipation.