SA climbers ready to do it for Madiba
Port Elizabeth’s Andisa Liba was doing well on her gruelling Mount Kilimanjaro climb, #Trek4Mandela Project Manager Nkateko Mabale said on Monday.
Liba is one of 30 South Africans who will summit the mountain on statesman Nelson Mandela’s birthday on Wednesday.
The group embarked on the expedition to raise funds for feminine hygiene products for impoverished pupils around the country.
Mabale, who arrived in South Africa on Monday, said she had left the team in high spirits.
“I left the group in Tanzania two days ago [Saturday] because my role is to ensure that they were well settled and they were ready for the climb.
“Everyone, according to our WhatsApp group, is fine. You won’t be able to speak to them as they have since lost network coverage.
“According to the itinerary, they are having a rest day today and will start climbing again tomorrow. They are set to summit on the 18th,” Mabale said.
Before leaving on the taxing climb, Liba told The Herald she had adopted two Bay schools and would be buying sanitary pads for the girls for a year.
She will be starting with Kama Primary School, New Brighton, and then move over to Molefe Senior Primary, also in New Brighton.
She said she had spent a short while at the schools and had been keen to help as she remembered vividly how awful it was for some of the girls, who had resorted to using socks as sanitary towels.
Mabale said the aim was to get 100 climbers on the mountain this year in celebration of what would have been Madiba’s 100th birthday.
Another group of climbers will take on the tallest mountain on the African continent later this year.
Among this group, who hope to summit on August 9 to commemorate Women’s Day, is Port Elizabeth-born journalist Gillian Pillay, who will complete the climb for a third time.
All money raised from her climb will be donated to girls from her former high school, St Thomas Secondary in the Bay’s northern areas.
The 2018 expedition aims to raise enough funds to ensure that 500,000 girls will not miss a day of school because they do not have access to sanitary pads. The aim is to buy six million packets of pads.
In less than six months, tourist numbers at two museums named after former statesman Nelson Mandela have doubled.
The Nelson Mandela Museum for youth and heritage in Qunu, and the Nelson Mandela Museum in the Bhunga building in Mthatha attracted close to 19,000 tourist between January and June, compared to 9,000 tourists who visited in the same period last year.
Museum spokesperson Fumanekile Wisani attributed this increase to the centenary celebrations for South Africa’s first black president.
Wisani said they wanted to go beyond the centenary celebrations and tourism, and encourage people to engage in activities that would have a positive impact on the lives of Mandela’s people.
He said the numbers would have been far past the 19,000 mark now if not for the taxi strike which had rocked the busy town in March.
The violence resulted in the closure of taxi ranks.
Wisani said numbers had also increased due to the centenary events held to kick off the celebrations.
The main celebration will be held at Mandela’s birthplace in Mvezo on Wednesday.
“We are based in Mthatha, but we are international by virtue of being a Nelson Mandela museum, so in our activities we look beyond KSD,” Wisani said.
“Tourists can visit many sites in Qunu alone because of its rich history – places that speak to who Mandela was, like the grazing land where he and other boys his age used to play [fight] with sticks, and the church where he was baptised, among other sites.”
He said their biggest challenge was parking.
“That has a negative impact in terms of tourism. We feel that a lot can be done to improve that, and we should also have local markets centred around the museum.”
He encouraged South Africans and international tourists to visit the museums to delve deeper into the meaning of Mandela right there in his home town.
He said the museum planned to donate chairs and tables to a primary school in Xolobe, Tsomo, inspired by the love Mandela had for children.
Vuyisa Pungushe from Tsolo said he visited the museum for the first time yesterday.
“The museum has all the footprints of Mandela growing up, right up to his prison cell.
“It is a good reflection of where we come from as a country and we will always be grateful to him for that,” Pungushe said.
“It is a reminder of what Mandela stood for – unity among blacks and whites.
“Parents must take their children and visit the museums. We are where we are because of tata Mandela.
“I wish that on his day everyone in the country should do some good for others without expecting something in return, as that is what Mandela was preaching.”