On 18 July, Mr Mandela’s granddaughters Zaziwe and Swati joined the Mandela Bangle Program, to quietly honour their late grandfather’s legacy. While most of the country openly celebrated Mandela Day, Zaziwe and Swati spent their 67 minutes behind the scenes, in a container yard, prepping for the launch of the fourth Long Walk to Freedom container library.
After a warm welcome from Sharon, Chris, and the team at Container Conversions, the granddaughters got busy adding the finishing touches to a library sponsored by them, and destined for a primary school in Kroonstad.
The morning flew by in a creative whirl of painting and packing, before the container was loaded onto the flatbed truck, and sent off to Dorrington Matsepe Primary School. Once delivered, the container stood
among the prefab classrooms, for the weekend to pass, and for Monday morning to arrive: the first day of the third term, for the 1 034 learners of Dorrington Matsepe.
And what an incredible first day back at school it was!
Zaziwe and Swati arrived mid-morning, and were whisked off to the next-door school’s hall. Members of the community, the principal Mr Samuel Magaula and the school’s Soul Buddyz facilitator, Ms Elizabeth Matube gave powerful speeches, thanking the Mandela’s for the profound gift of the library.
In between the speeches, the school choir performed several magnificent songs. When it was time for Swati and Zaziwe to speak, the children went completely quiet, hanging on to their every word. Above all else, Swati asked the children to not only appreciate the importance of reading, but to also ensure that they have fun while reading.
As the ceremony was drawing to a close, visitors from the Zoom Project in the United States arrived. The adults and children in this project focus on social entrepreneurship. One of their initiatives was to raise $US2000 selling Mandela Bangles, in order to raise funds for more school libraries.
To welcome the Zoom Project, one of the school’s children stood up and sang opera – who would have known that this exquisite talent was waiting in Kroonstad?
Finally, it was time to unlock the library. Wayne Burnett from Times Media Limited took the lead, with a Lego Movie Piñata. What a joy – after the children realised what they needed to do, it wasn’t long before pieces of Lego came tumbling out of the piñata, to be snapped up by little hands! These pieces were just a sample of what Wayne had brought with him – inside the library, he’d already laid out a whopping 8 000 pieces of Lego. This was a first for the Long Walk to Freedom libraries, and a fantastic compliment to the learning initiative offered by the library’s other assets.
The Rotary Humanitarian Centre in Bedfordview sponsored 500 books for this library. They are responsible for the Literature Project, which freely provides books to schools, churches and other educational institutions in Southern Africa, and Malawi.
In addition the library received 200 magazines from Joe’s Magz in Johannesburg; and the 250 new readers, some of which were in local Sotho language, were donated by The Bangle rogram, and sourced from Qualibooks Naledi. Chris from Qualibooks kindly donated beautiful hand made wooden toys, as well as a selection of educational posters.
Zaziwe and Swati were in the throng of the crowd as the children were entertained by Wayne, the Zoom Project children, and the opening of their new library.
After many exciting photo opportunities and greetings with the Mandela’s, we were served an excellent lunch, which had been specially prepared by the school.
It was an outstanding day which will hopefully go above and beyond the 67 minutes it was meant to epitomise.