The
South African President Jacob Zuma on Monday unveiled a nine-metre
bronze statue of Nelson Mandela with his arms outstretched to symbolise
unity and reconciliation.
“We laid Tata to rest in Qunu only
yesterday and today Monday, he rises majestically at the seat of
government, as a symbol of peace, reconciliation, unity and progress,”
he said.
Tata is the Xhosa word for father, and
Mandela is revered as the father of the new South Africa born at the end
of apartheid in 1994 when he became its first black president.
Reuters reports that the 4.5 tonne
statue was the largest of Mandela created in the world and was
inaugurated on the lawn of South Africa’s hilltop ‘Union Buildings’, the
seat of the central government, overlooking the capital Pretoria.
The brown sandstone Union Buildings,
built by British colonial architect Herbert Baker, were the site of
Mandela’s swearing in as president nearly two decades ago.
It was also the location where his body
lay in state for three days last week as over 100,000 people paid their
respects in person, before his state funeral in Eastern Cape
The inauguration coincided with December
16 reconciliation day, commemorating the ideal of racial and political
reconciliation that Mandela preached after his release in 1990 from 27
years in apartheid prisons.
Reuters reports that under apartheid
rule, Reconciliation Day had remembered the 1838 Battle of Blood River,
in which some 500 Afrikaner pioneers defeated more than 10,000 Zulu
warriors.
But it was renamed in 1994 in a bid to heal the wounds of three centuries of white dominance.
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