Chilean President Michelle Bachelet will deliver the 12th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture on Women’s Day, 9 August 2014.
This is the first Annual Lecture since Nelson Mandela’s passing in December last year, and 5 August marks 52 years since he was arrested and charged with treason.
The lecture will take place at the Cape Town City Hall, a place of huge significance for Mandela, South Africa and the rest of the world. It was from the balcony of the City Hall that Mandela addressed thousands of people on 11 February 1990, following his release after spending 27 years in prison, and where he spoke to the public as president for the first time on 9 May 1994, shortly after Parliament elected him to the position.
Bachelet is expected to deliver a lecture on building social cohesion through active citizenship, with the sub-themes of education for participation, democratic co-operation through the notion of community and identity and alienation with a specific focus on youth.
Flow Communications will be covering the event for the Nelson Mandela Foundation, one of our foremost clients.
Bachelet is serving her second term as president of the South American country, after being sworn in in March this year. She is also the first woman to hold the post.
In 2010, after her first term, she created the Dialogue Foundation (Fundación Dialoga) to continue contributing to the renewal of ideas from centre-leftists, and to serve as a motivational space for new leadership to form.
In the same year she became the president of the Social Protection Floor Advisory Group, a joint initiative with the International Labor Organization and the World Health Organisation that works to promote social policies that stimulate economic growth and social cohesion.
She was also the Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, UN Women, created in 2010 to oversee those UN programmes promoting the rights of women. She resigned from the UN at the beginning of 2013, and former South African Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka succeeded her in that post.
Nelson Mandela Foundation (NMF) chief executive Sello Hatang says in a press release: “As South Africa celebrates its 20 years of democratic freedom, we remember those who have fought for democracy, we salute those who have built democracy and we commit to those who work tirelessly to grow democracy.”
Flow CEO Tara Turkington will be one of a team of half a dozen Flow writers and sub-editors to cover the event for the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
Tara says working at the event is a huge honour for Flow. "President Michelle Bachelet is an awe-inspiring person who has done much for empowering women. I am looking forward to listening to her lecture on a topic which is close to my, and the rest of the Flow team's, hearts.
"We have covered many of the foundation's annual lectures in the past for their website, www.nelsonmandela.org. My favourite lecture was by Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus, who just threw away his notes and spoke with such passion about his experiences of empowerment through microlending to the very poor, especially women.
"I also loved the late Wangari Mathaai's lecture, who spoke very humbly about the importance of planting trees in rural Kenya, and then there was Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who focused on the positive role of women in the reconstruction of her country after so many years of war. Actually, I've really loved all the lectures I've been at.
"If you aren't lucky enough to attend, you can follow the lecture online and read it on the website. Often, the speakers have been articulate and provoked thought about complex societal issues, and I have no doubt President Bachelet will be the same."
She adds that the venue at the Cape Town City Hall and the date of the lecture on Woman's Day make it even more special.
Willem Steenkamp, a senior member of the Flow team who will be covering the lecture, says: "I'm looking forward to working on the Annual Lecture this year, especially because of the significance of this event. I was a young journalist in Cape Town when Madiba was released, and I was at the City Hall on that unforgettable day when he first addressed us as president of South Africa. It's an honour for me to play a part in promoting his legacy in this important place."
Women's Day is an important day in South Africa. On 9 August 1956, 20 000 women marched to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to demand that women not be required to carry passes.
