Mandela´s memories

Author: Helenita Holz

Reviewer: Maria Clara Westphalen

History has shown that the human rights of every man woman and children have made a tremendous leap in the last fifty years. After the United Nations came into being, in 1948, an international Declaration of Human Rights was signed and adopted by most of the member nations. By doing so they now defend the basic human rights of their citizens and those of anyone visiting their counties.

The Human Rights Day was first on December 10th 1996. The universal declaration of Human Rights enshrines ideals and values with ancient roots in the cultures and traditions of all peoples. The achievement of the Declaration was to bring together those traditions and to recognize that “human” rights are, by their nature, universal,inalienable and indivisible: that they belong to all people. They are a standard of achievement to which every human being is entitled.

On Human Rights Day we recall that each of us has a responsibility to ensure that we respect the human rights of others as much as we expect others to respect our rights. Its is a relationship which challenges us every day whether in our family life, our school, our communities, our society or our government.

As recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, president of the African National Congress and leader of the anti-apartheid movement, Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of the world. In his memoirs, Long Walk to Freedom, which became an international bestseller, it tells the extraordinary story of his life, an epic of struggle, setback, renewed hope and political consciousness, its essential role in the formation of the ANC Youth League, his dramatic years in hiding, which led, that led to a sentence to life imprisonment in the 1964, and its busy quarter centuries behind bars. He also movingly recalls the major events leading up to his victory in the first multiracial election held in South Africa in April 1994. Here is one of the most powerful and inspiring stories of our time. However, the book on the story of Mandela will be remembered by those who read it.