The Nelson Mandela Foundation and 46664, Mandela's Aids awareness trust, are launching a global campaign to officially declare July 18 Mandela Day, worldwide. July 18 happens to be Nelson Mandela's birthday.
I enthusisatically support this initiative.
As the campaigners frame it, Mandela Day will be an occasion to celebrate Mandela's life, and "will serve as a global call to action for people to recognise their individual power to make an imprint and help change the world around them for the better." We will all be called upon, on that day, to spend 67 minutes in the kind of civic action that can add significant value to the world around us. The suggested 67 minutes remind us of the fact that Mandela's own human rights campaign started 67 years ago, in 1942.
It goes without saying that actions within South Africa itself will be crucial to really kick-starting the campaign for a global Mandela Day. South Africa, as a country, should quickly declare an official Mandela Day within its borders, and preferably make it a public holiday, if this is not the case already. Then AU countries should follow. Then the UN. Individual countries will of course be at liberty to decide whether or not, and/or when, Mandela Day becomes a public holiday.
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