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Twelve years after his death, Mandela’s legacy risks being reduced to performative charity and forgotten T-shirts.
Youngsters from the central Johannesburg community drink some water as they queue for food, while wearing their 67 Blankets For Nelson Mandela Day donations of scarves and beanies, 18 July 2025. The distribution forms part of the annual Nelson Mandela Day initiative. Scarves, knitted by volunteers across South Africa, were distributed at Port Plein Park and were available for anyone to help themselves. Picture: Michel Bega/The Citizen
It was in 2009 that the call to do 67 minutes for Mandela on the great man’s birthday, 18 July, first sounded.
It seemed a bizarre number, hardly long enough to paint a classroom, much less tend a food garden but perfect if you were packing food – or posing for a pic in the local newspaper.
And there was plenty of that. Mandela Day became the bane of every newspaper editor and news editor in the country, from the big mainstream dailies to the knockand-drops, with secretaries and PRs demanding coverage.
It was ubiquitous.
People even summited Kilimanjaro on Madiba’s birthday, ostensibly to keep the girl in school by drawing attention to the dearth of sanitary products that would keep girls at home, rather than face the embarrassment of being in class during their period.
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Much of the public displays of piety, charity and Ubuntu were performative and public – flying right in the face of the Good Book’s injunction to keep alms deeds private.
But much of it was real.
The glow might have faded from the faces of school kids when the celebs left and the TV camera lights were doused, but at least they were left with (delete as applicable) new libraries/ painted classrooms/planted food gardens/JoJo tanks/new shoes/ stationery kits.
Mandela has been gone 12 years, come December, and the momentum for 67 minutes, codified to represent a minute for each year of his life that he dedicated to public service, seems to have stuttered a bit.
There are still the old stagers drawn like fading moths to the guttering candle light of a pic in the local newspaper (or self-published on LinkedIn and cross-pollinated by eager staffers on their Facebook and X accounts), but the wave that was once a tsunami of self-congratulation certainly seems to have ebbed.
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It’s a pity.
It doesn’t matter what the motivation was to take part in Mandela Day – and literally getting the T-shirt – the recipients benefited.
But it’s not surprising if less good works are being done, because the world is a far harsher, crueller place than it was in Madiba’s day.
It’s manifestly more selfish and graphically more unequal and the vulnerable are at even greater risk.
You don’t even see people wearing their Mandela Day T-shirts any more – even if it is just once a year. We are poorer for that – all of us. Tata Madiba deserved better.
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