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Embassy of South Africa, Washington, DC
Brand South Africa
WASHINGTON, May 6, 2012
Singer-activist Harry Belafonte, actor Danny Glover and Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Indiana), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and co-author of 1986 Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, will be honored together with 10 other eminent Americans and organizations for their contribution to South Africa’s freedom at a Washington awards ceremony on Thursday, May 10, the 18th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s inauguration as South Africa’s first president elected on the basis of universal suffrage.
“As we celebrate the hundredth birthday of Nelson Mandela’s movement, the African National Congress, we want to reaffirm our gratitude to all the American people and their leaders who played a part in making that extraordinary day, May 10, 1994, possible,” South Africa’s ambassador to the US, Ebrahim Rasool, said. “By taking — and persevering in — a stand against an evil system, they helped South Africa find inspiring new ways to resolve generations-old divisions and conflict and become part of a continent where democracy is now the norm and which is home to many of the world’s fastest-growing economies.”
The other honorees at Thursday’s gala event are: former Pennsylvania Congressman William Gray; Dr Mary Frances Berry, co-founder of the Free South Africa Movement; William Lucy, president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unions; TransAfrica, whose founder, Randall Robinson, recently received one of South Africa’s highest honors, the OR Tambo award, from President Jacob Zuma; Kodak, which was among the first US companies to sever economic ties with apartheid South Africa in 1986; the Congressional Black Caucus, which collectively took a leadership role in legislative efforts to isolate the apartheid government; Lincoln University in Philadelphia, America’s oldest historically black college; and the Southern Africa Support Project and its founder Sylvia Hill, who pioneered efforts to place the freedom struggles of South Africa and its neighbors on the Washington agenda.
Two champions of South African freedom will be honored posthumously, the late Rep. Howard Wolpe and Rep. Donald Payne, both of whom served as chairs of the House African Affairs Subcommittee. South Africa laments their passing. Their awards will be accepted by members of their families.
The design of the awards is based on the famous image of Nelson Mandela emerging from prison with arm raised in a freedom salute. The image was used for the statue that now stands outside Victor Verster prison from which Mandela walked to freedom in February 1990 and will also be the basis for the statue due to be unveiled next year outside the South African embassy, across Massachusetts Avenue from the statue of Winston Churchill outside the residence of the British ambassador.
The event will take place at the Fairmont Hotel.
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