“When times are tough, think of Adelaide and Oliver Tambo, who spent their lives serving others, and let that inspire your heart”, the couple’s son, Dali Tambo, said in Soweto on Nelson Mandela International Day.
“A lot of people think exile was a cushy existence. It wasn’t,” said Dali Tambo, who is a trustee of the Oliver and Adelaide Tambo Foundation.
Dali Tambo was speaking at the Adelaide Tambo School for the Physically Challenged in Jabavu, Soweto, which was renamed in 2000 to honour Adelaide Tambo. Mandela Day is marked every year on the birthday Nelson Mandela and Adelaide Tambo shared,18 July. Since the United Nations declared 18 July Nelson Mandela International Day in 2009, ordinary people have been encouraged mark it by doing whatever they can to improve the lives of others.
Nelson Mandela and Adelaide Tambo used to celebrate their shared a birthday over tea and cake every year, if they could, said Dali Tambo. This played a huge role in cementing a deep love and respect between the two. Oliver Tambo was African National Congress president from 1967 to 1991. He and Adelaide went into exile in London in the late 1950s after he was banned by the apartheid-era government.
Dali Tambo spoke of his mother’s lonely struggle to put food on the table and ensure her three children had excellent education, all the while supporting her ever-travelling husband. Oliver Tambo travelled the world meeting presidents and other dignitaries in a bid to keep pressure on South Africa’s apartheid-era government to change its exclusionary laws against black people. Adelaide, a nurse, worked back-to-back shifts to keep the family going. “It was costly to herself and her health,” he said. “It was a life of separation, a hard exile, but she was my father’s rock.”
The Nelson Mandela Foundation joined the Oliver and Adelaide Tambo Foundation’s celebration of Mandela Day at the school, where a large-scale programme to rehabilitate its facilities is under way as part of various organisations’ Mandela Day actions. This year the Nelson Mandela Foundation has urged people to find ways to serve others daily in honour of Mandela’s dedication to justice, and to take sustainable action against poverty.
A list of 22 donors has, among others, promised the school a wheelchair ramp, painting and painting materials, fumigation, landscaping, restoration of the playground, 13 wheelchairs, linen and curtains, two 10-seater minibuses, a computer centre and washing machines, musical instruments, a library and various amounts of cash.
“The success of today is that there are so many partners,” said David Hodnett, deputy chief executive of Barclays Africa and chief executive of the group’s South African banking operations. Barclays PLC has a 16.4% stake in Absa, which is one of the sponsors.
Also in Soweto, at the former Donaldson Orlando Community Centre (now called the Orlando YMCA), the Nelson Mandela Foundation is part of a programme to improve the facilities. Nelson Mandela used to use the centre for boxing training in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The street on which it is situated, Mooki Street, is now a provincial heritage site.
Nelson Mandela Foundation spokesperson Lunga Nene said the Foundation was “happy to give back to a location that is so important to our history”.