Madiba in pole position

The image of Nelson Mandela that will be unveiled at the Capture Site.

The image of Nelson Mandela that will be unveiled at the Capture Site.

Published Aug 2, 2012

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A unique depiction of Nelson Mandela is to be unveiled outside Howick next Saturday, the 50th anniversary of his capture by the security police of the former SA regime. The annual Nelson Mandela lecture will be held in Cape Town on the next day.

Fifty laser-cut steel poles have been set into the Midlands landscape at heights of between 5m and 10m. When viewed from the site where he was captured, the poles create a portrait of the former president.

Funded by Amafa/Heritage and uMngeni Municipality, the landscape portrait is by SA artist Marco Cianfanelli.

The image is expected to become a major tourist attraction and a permanent record of his capture at that spot on August 4, 1962. The Capture Site is already in the process of being proclaimed a Heritage Site.

The unveiling will be hosted by the KZN Department of Co-Operative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta), the uMngeni Municipality, the Apartheid Museum (Joburg), the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory and Amafa/Heritage KwaZulu-Natal, which is the statutory body with responsibility for protection of heritage in the province.

Assisted by Cogta, the uMngeni Municipality, has acquired the property adjacent to the capture site, 3km outside Howick on the R103, and commissioned a plan for a museum and multi-purpose theatre and amphitheatre, as well as tourism and educational and cultural facilities on the site, creating job opportunities for the local community.

The initial phase was last year’s opening at the Capture Site of an exhibition titled “Mandela: Leader, Comrade, Negotiator, Prisoner, Statesman”. The exhibition was a joint project of the Apartheid Museum, the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory (Nelson Mandela Foundation) and the Nelson Mandela Museum (Mthatha). - Sunday Tribune

l For more information, contact James van Vuuren at 082 499 3531 or [email protected]

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