Statue unveiled to honour Mandela

Helicopters carrying the South African flag fly over a 9-meter bronze statue of former South African president Nelson Mandela which was unveiled on December 16, 2013 on the lawns of the Union Buildings, the seat of government in Pretoria where Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa's first black president in 1994. South Africans started coming to terms with the loss of Nelson Mandela Monday, unveiling the giant statue to honour his struggle for equality. AFP PHOTO / ALEXANDER JOE 

In Summary

• This is where generations of apartheid heads of state signed many of the racial laws Mr Mandela spent most of his life fighting against, but also where he was inaugurated as South Africa’s first black president in 1994.

By AFP
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On a public holiday dedicated to reconciliation, South Africans started coming to terms with the loss of Nelson Mandela Monday, unveiling a giant statue to honour his struggle for equality.

A day after the democracy icon was buried with full honours in his boyhood village nearly 1,000 kilometres away, a nine-metre bronze likeness was unveiled on the lawns of the Union Buildings, the seat of government in Pretoria.

This is where generations of apartheid heads of state signed many of the racial laws Mr Mandela spent most of his life fighting against, but also where he was inaugurated as South Africa’s first black president in 1994.

WELCOMING GESTURE

Last week, up to 100,000 people stood there in hours-long queues to file past Mr Mandela’s open casket as he lay in state for three days.

President Jacob Zuma presided over the unveiling of the giant statue of a smiling Mandela in mid-stride, arms stretched out in a welcoming gesture, sporting a trademark ‘Madiba shirt’.

Mr Zuma said the outstretched arms denoted that “South Africa is now a democratic country, he is embracing the entire nation, he is advancing to the nation to say: ‘let us come together, let us unite’.”

For 50 million compatriots, Mr Mandela was not just a statesman and president, but a moral guide who led their polarised country away from internecine racial conflict.

The 4.5-tonne statue is the largest of many erected around the world in honour of the anti-apartheid hero. Many show Mr Mandela with his fist raised defiantly in the air.

DEFEATED APARTHEID

“When one looks at comrade Madiba’s statue out there ... it is almost like we are hitting the last nail in the coffin of apartheid,” said the deputy president of the ruling African National Congress, Mr Cyril Ramaphosa, during the event.

“Now our father is up there saying to the world we have defeated apartheid,” he added.

The towering statue had been planned long before Mr Mandela’s death.

Built at a cost of some $800,000 (Sh68,8 million), it replaces a statue of Barry Hertzog, an Afrikaner nationalist who was prime minister of South Africa from 1924 to 1939.

Mr Zuma announced the Union Buildings would become a national heritage site, “to write a new and inclusive narrative for our country”.

“While we acknowledge the past, we also emphasise that we are now one nation and that our national symbols need to reflect that unity in diversity,” the president said.

"MISSING MAN"

South Africans of various backgrounds gathered at the Union Buildings to follow the unveiling on big screens as a 21-gun salute rang out and air force jets flew over in a “missing man” formation usually reserved to honour a fallen pilot.

“Reconciliation, peace, that’s what this is about,” said Afrikaner Retha Jansen, 63, who came to be part of history.

President Zuma stressed that for true reconciliation to be possible, injustices from the past still have to be corrected.

“We have always understood that true reconciliation would not take place successfully in the midst of glaring socio-economic disparities” in one of the world’s most unequal nations.