“Ah Dalibhunga!” I remember this praise vividly from the December of 2013. This was SABC’s tribute to Nelson Mandela after his passing. 

3 December, 2023 will mark 10 years since the giant passed, and today, 18 July 2023 will mark 13 years since we started celebrating International Mandela Day. Mandela Day is a global call to action for people to recognise their power to make a positive impact. On the day, people are called upon to dedicate 67 minutes of their time to engage in acts of kindness. But it feels to me that the 67 minutes are an ant to the herculean 67 years Madiba spent fighting for social justice.

The day has had people change people’s lives and had an impact on organisations that are dedicated to doing good. In a world that has been made more impoverished and unequal since the Covid-19 pandemic, help is certainly needed. But for me, Mandela Day itself has become a gimmick and a shadow of what it could or should be. I see it as a superficial act of token charity. 

I say this because as we are faced with these problems many individuals and organisations engage in short-term, symbolic gestures that fail to address the root causes of one of our biggest South African youth unemployment problems. Instead of focusing on sustained efforts and systemic change, Mandela Day has become a day of temporary feel-good actions that often fade away as quickly as they appear. 

One-day relief programs may be well-intentioned, but they can harm the beneficiaries. These programs typically provide short-term assistance to individuals and communities in need but fail to address the underlying causes of their hardships. Offering temporary relief without sustainable solutions, these programs create a cycle of dependency and can perpetuate the problems they aim to alleviate. The limited timeframe of these initiatives often results in insufficient support, leaving beneficiaries without long-term solutions to their challenges, and with the main ‘win’ seeming to be the social media photos spread by companies and corporations.

I believe that to truly honour Mandela’s vision and bring about meaningful change, we must go beyond the limited scope of a single day and commit ourselves to ongoing advocacy, activism, and long-term support for those in need. As individuals, let us do what we can with what we have. But let us not wait for the day as the only one on which we perform an act of kindness to spread the spirit of Ubuntu.

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What are your thoughts on the evolution of Mandela Day over the years and its effectiveness in addressing the root causes of societal problems?