What are you doing on Mandela Day? These seven words form the fashionable question on everyone’s lips.
|||Durban - What are you doing on Mandela Day? These seven words form the question on everyone’s lips. Celebrities and firms have pressed the send button on multiple releases punting exactly when and where they will be giving back.
Advertising executives have brainstormed the most catchy way to combine the numbers 67 and 94. And even some of the most well-meaning initiatives have had a tendency towards emphasising the numbers and not the message: Nataniel will decorate 1 000 cupcakes with children in Eersterust, Jacobs coffee has been arranging 5 000 cups of coffee to look like Mandela’s face and Elle magazine has encouraged its readers to knit blanket squares 67 stitches wide and 67 rows long before posting them to its offices to be made into blankets.
This play on numbers and self-indulgence could be argued to be innocent, a tool used to attract participants to the relevant activities. But in some instances companies have simply abandoned change promotion for self-promotion.
The Mandela Day website states that the objective of Mandela Day is to “inspire individuals to take action to help change the world for the better and, in doing so, build a global movement for good”.
In Durban the eThekwini
municipality will have its hands full as mayor James Nxumalo, KZN Premier Zweli Mkhize and the executive committee take part in several activities.
Nxumalo will join public service volunteers singing a birthday song for Madiba at the Durban City Hall before planting trees and renovating the library at John Langalibalele Dube High in Inanda.
Visits will also be made to the Ingwemabala Orphanage in Emawoti and Ohlange High School in Inanda.
The delegation will also clean the grave of former ANC President John Langalibalele Dube.
Their final stop will be in KwaNdengezi where they will be cleaning the yard and painting the house of a woman who turns 107. Many people are also expected to spend their 67 minutes helping to clean Addington Hospital. KZN Health MEC Sibongiseni Dhlomo, who is abroad, thanked the volunteers for their work.
- The Mercury
*What are you doing with your 67 minutes? Tweet us @IOL using the hashtag #IOL67, share your good deeds on our Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/IOLnews) or email photos of how you helped your community to readerpics@inl.co.za.