International Mandela Day | Various activities around the country

Today is International Mandela Day! The Eastern Cape will be a hive of activity today as the country marks Mandela Day.

President Cyril Ramaphosa is expected to join the Water and Sanitation Minister Senzo Mchunu, as part of the programme to stave off day zero in parts of the drought-stricken Nelson Mandela Bay metro.

A number of other Mandela Day initiatives are scheduled to take place throughout the province.

Charity organisation, Rays of Hope in Alexandra, Johannesburg, has urged the country to draw strength from the spirit of the late Nelson Mandela during this difficult time, by giving back.

[hendrikdewetoosthuizen]

Why was Mandela imprisoned ? It wasn't for writing a poem like Alexander Solzenitzen in the Soviet Union.... Nelson Mandela was the head of UmKhonto we Sizwe (MK), the terrorist wing of the ANC and South African Communist Party. He had pleaded guilty to 156 acts of public violence including mobilizing terrorist bombing campaigns, which planted bombs in public places, including the Johannesburg railway station. Many innocent people, including women and children, were killed by Nelson Mandela's MK terrorists.
The fact is that even Amnesty International refused to take on Nelson Mandela's case because they asserted that he was not a political prisoner, but had committed numerous violent crimes and had had a fair trial and a reasonable sentence. The most radical newspapers of the day, such as the Star and Rand Daily Mail praised the leniency of the Court in giving away the lightest possible sentence for such violent crimes. In 1964, anyone in America, or Britain, or France, who committed such crimes would have been executed.
Even the Rand Daily Mail, the most outspoken liberal newspaper at the time in South Africa and, in many ways, a supporter of Mandela and the ANC, wrote about the sentences passed by the judge, "The sentences pronounced by Judge De Wet at the close of the Rivonia trial are both wise and just. The law is best served when there is firmness tinged with mercy, and this was the case yesterday. The sentences could not have been less severe than those imposed. The men found guilty had planned sabotage on a wide scale and had conspired for armed revolution. As the judge pointed out yesterday, the crime of which they were found guilty was really high treason. The death penalty would have been justified."7

[hendrikdewetoosthuizen]

Why was Mandela imprisoned ? It wasn't for writing a poem like Alexander Solzenitzen in the Soviet Union.... Nelson Mandela was the head of UmKhonto we Sizwe (MK), the terrorist wing of the ANC and South African Communist Party. He had pleaded guilty to 156 acts of public violence including mobilizing terrorist bombing campaigns, which planted bombs in public places, including the Johannesburg railway station. Many innocent people, including women and children, were killed by Nelson Mandela's MK terrorists.
The fact is that even Amnesty International refused to take on Nelson Mandela's case because they asserted that he was not a political prisoner, but had committed numerous violent crimes and had had a fair trial and a reasonable sentence. The most radical newspapers of the day, such as the Star and Rand Daily Mail praised the leniency of the Court in giving away the lightest possible sentence for such violent crimes. In 1964, anyone in America, or Britain, or France, who committed such crimes would have been executed.
Even the Rand Daily Mail, the most outspoken liberal newspaper at the time in South Africa and, in many ways, a supporter of Mandela and the ANC, wrote about the sentences passed by the judge, "The sentences pronounced by Judge De Wet at the close of the Rivonia trial are both wise and just. The law is best served when there is firmness tinged with mercy, and this was the case yesterday. The sentences could not have been less severe than those imposed. The men found guilty had planned sabotage on a wide scale and had conspired for armed revolution. As the judge pointed out yesterday, the crime of which they were found guilty was really high treason. The death penalty would have been justified."7