Tired of London, Tired of Life - A website about things to do in London

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6 December 2013

Pay tribute to Mandela at the Southbank Centre

We'll be hearing an awful lot over the next few days about Nelson Mandela, whose death was announced last night, and rightly so. One of the greatest men of our age, Mandela visited London many times and a statue on the walkway between the Royal Festival Hall and Hungerford Bridge, unveiled by ANC president Oliver Tambo in 1985.


There is of course, another statue of Mandela in Parliament Square, and your author was lucky enough to be present in August 2007 when Mandela came to London to speak at the unveiling his statue in Parliament Square. He told a story about how he and his friend Oliver Tambo visited Parliament Square and Westminster Abbey in 1962, joking that one day a statue of a black person might be erected in Parliament Square alongside former South African leader General Jan Smuts. That dream came true and Mandela's story is a demonstration of how humans can change the world for the better. He will be missed.

For more on the Southbank statue, see http://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/2573

^Picture © Paola Gospodnetic used under a Creative Commons license^

2 comments:

  1. When the then-Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Fraser, visited Nelson Mandela in Cape Town's Pollsmoor Prison in 1986, Mandela had been locked away from the world for decades. The first thing the prisoner asked was not if the Australian could get him released or if the boycott against apartheid was working, but something far more modest and human: "Tell me, Mr Fraser, is Donald Bradman still alive?" Bradman was certainly the world's greatest cricketer ever, but his halcyon days were in the 1930s!

    I didn't like the conservative Malcolm Fraser, but I am glad he told the story of Mandela's deep humanity.

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  2. I guess the flowers will be mounting up at this statue as well

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