STATEMENT: MANDELA DAY – 67 MINUTES
2013-07-18
In keeping with this year’s theme of: “Take action; inspire change; make every day a Mandela Day”, staff of the FW de Klerk Foundation will be donating 67 minutes of their time to a community project in Cloetesville, Stellenbosch.
The ATKV AbbAsorg project cares for more than 35 disadvantaged and vulnerable children - aged between three and six years - from the local community. The project provides the children with nutritious meals and promotes school-readiness by means of an educational pre-school programme.
Nelson Mandela is approaching the end of the long walk that he began 95 years ago in Qunu. On his birthday we should commemorate the remarkable contributionthat he has made to South Africa and to all its people.
Mr FW de Klerk and his wife Elita have decided to suspend their current working visit and holiday in Europe because of Mr Mandela’s medical condition. They will arrive back in Cape Town tomorrow. Their thoughts are with the Mandela family during this difficult time and they join in their prayers for an improvement in Mr Mandela’s health. 
In a rambling statement earlier today, ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu took issue with critics of President Zuma. Mr Mthembu was angry about allegations that there are elements within the ANC who fear the President; that President Zuma is beholden to those who supported him when he was accused of corruption; and charges that critics “cannot even wait for the Public Protector and other respected institutions created by our constitution to investigate and make public their findings regarding the Nkandla allegations”.
When he briefed the media yesterday before the debate on the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Bill in Parliament, Minister of Trade and Industry, Rob Davies, said that the country was nowhere near the point where a sunset clause for BBBEE measures could be considered. He said that according to a -007 survey by the University of Pretoria, most companies were still at the lowest level of BBBEE.
19 June 2013 will rightly be commemorated as a key point in the dismal story of the dispossession of the land of the black population of South Africa.
On 27 February ANC Western Cape leader Marius Fransman gave an interview to the local Voice of the Cape, a local Muslim radio station, in which he alleged that “… the DA had given over building contracts … as well as lots of contracts in Woodstock and Observatory that historically were in the hands of Muslim participants … to people from the Jewish community.”