Living on as a flower, a rare sea creature, a long walk’s worth of roads
AROUND the world there are streets, schools, universities, trees, flowers, race horses and even a nuclear particle, a spider and a group of sea slugs that have been named after him.
Even when he is gone, Nelson Mandela’s name will not be lost to us.
Indeed, it is expected that even more places will want to carry his name after his death.
His name is linked to the Nobel prize, his visage has appeared on stamps and coins, and he has received national orders from many countries.
Apart from the Nobel peace prize, awarded jointly in 1993 to Mandela and FW de Klerk, the awards he received include South Africa’s Order of Mapungubwe for national reconciliation and nation-building, the Companion of the Order of Canada and honorary Canadian citizenship.
He was also the last recipient of the Soviet Union’s Lenin Peace Prize.
Several race horses — the first in 1971 in Argentina and the last one in New Zealand in 2001 — were named after Mandela.
The more unusual tributes include the Protea cyneroides (“Madiba”), a striking, deep-red king protea. In 1997, the National Botanical Gardens in Singapore named an orchid Paravanda Nelson Mandela.
In 2002, a new species of spider, Singafrotypa Mandela, was named after him. The spider is found near Cape Town.
A new nuclear particle discovered at the British Institute of Physics at Leeds University was named the Mandela Particle in 1973.
Probably one of the biggest honours in the list of peculiar tributes was that of having a genus and a whole new family of sea slugs name after him.
It is considered an honour to have a genus named after you, but an even bigger one to have the entire family carry your name. The Mandelia micocornata, a rare sea slug, is found along the coastline of the Cape Peninsula, according to the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory’s website.
According to the same website, there are 120 streets, bridges and highways named after him around the world. Perhaps one of the most famous is the Nelson Mandela Bridge in Newtown, Johannesburg.
Others include Mandela Avenue in Essex in Britain, Mandela Bridge in Utrecht in the Netherlands, Mandela Highway in Washington DC in the US, and Nelson Mandela squares in Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
There are Nelson Mandela highways and streets in countries throughout Africa, including Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Senegal, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Nigeria, Tunisia, Gambia, Mauritius and Rwanda.
Beyond the continent, Britain, the Netherlands, the US, Germany, Italy, France and Guyana are just some of the countries to have roads dedicated to him.
There are also schools, uni- versities and other educational institutions worldwide that are named after Mandela. They include the Nelson Mandela Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution at the Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi, India, Nelson Mandela Collega in the city of Port-au-Prince in Haiti, Nelson Mandela High School in N’Djamena in Chad, and Nelson Mandela University of Guinea in Conakry in Guinea.
There are also places of learning named after the former president across South Africa.