ABU DHABI // The 100,000 South Africans who call the UAE home can pay their respects to Nelson Mandela at a memorial service and sign a book of condolence in the capital next week.
“The memorial service will be held in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday at 6.30pm,” said Mpetjane Kgaogelo Lekgoro, South Africa’s ambassador to the UAE.
“The venue will be announced in due course and we will open a book of condolence from Sunday throughout the week in the consulate in Dubai and in the embassy in Abu Dhabi between 9am and noon. Residents will be able to pay their respects there.”
“I know they [South African expatriates] share this grief and we will find ways and means to assemble them,” said Mr Lekgoro, who met Mandela in 1990.
“I was the youth leader of the African National Congress, an organisation he was the president of. We continue to be a product of the legacy that Mandela left us in our township. Where we are currently and throughout this life, he spared no effort.”
Despite Mandela’s ill health, his death still came as a shock to Mr Lekgoro.
“He was a man who would put everyone at ease in his presence and he would come across to you as a man who, you knew, knew what was going on, knew what we were going through and knew what we were going to do,” he said.
“We’d always look up to him, he was a father, a leader, an icon – he was everything to us and it is a great loss to all the nation.”
“I heard the news at Abu Dhabi airport,” said Albie Sachs, a South African who was active in the apartheid struggle and appointed by Mandela to South Africa’s constitutional court.
“It was strange because I couldn’t have been further from South Africa physically yet there was something about Mandela that transcended the place and moment.”
Although saddened, Mr Sachs said the news came with a certain sense of release.
“He’d been hanging in there for so long, so it was like serenity and the moment came and he’s gone,” he said.
“The last time I had lunch with him was a few years back with my wife. He was very talkative and I saw him again at the World Cup in 2010. He wheeled out there, we saw his smile and wave, but he’d lost a lot of his vigour at the time.”
Nahtam, an Abu Dhabi-based humanitarian organisation, paid tribute to Mandela two years ago by publishing a book with 67 inspiring stories of the community in the UAE.
“It’s a big loss for the nation and the world,” said George Itty, Nahtam’s chief executive.
“His name is linked with freedom fighter but his message was to forget about all these things and help the people and get involved in the community. That’s the message he got across to us, and that you can get peace of mind by doing so.”
Mandela, who passed away late on Thursday night, once said: “Death is something inevitable. When a man has done what he considers to be his duty to his people and his country, he can rest in peace.”
Having certainly done his duty, it is now Mandela’s time to rest in peace.
cmalek@thenational.ae
