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19 August 2008

President Thabo Mbeki will on Friday, 22 August 2008, deliver the inaugural address of the Annual Raymond Mhlaba Memorial Lecture at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth.

Raymond Mhlaba, popularly known as "Oom Ray", together with other titans of his generation, took it upon themselves to organise and educate our people to become the makers of history to dismantle the bastions of apartheid and colonialism for a non-racial, non-racist and a united South Africa.

Oom Ray devoted his entire life to the service of the people and the cause of freedom. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964 and continued the struggle from prison. Oom Ray was released together with the former President, Nelson Mandela and other prominent political prisoners in 1989. He started as a trade unionist in his early twenties, became an anti-apartheid activist, diplomat, liberation leader, and after the democratic breakthrough in 1994, the first Premier of the Eastern Cape.

The Annual Raymond Mhlaba Memorial Lecture celebrates and commemorates the life of the late Raymond Mhlaba, the humanist leader, selfless cadre, revolutionary thinker, a dedicated and disciplined father of our liberation.

Members of the media are invited to attend as follows:

Date: Friday, 22 August 2008
Time: 11h00 to 12h00(media to arrive at 10h00)
Venue: Gold Fields Auditorium, Summerstrand Campus (North), University Way, Summerstrand, Port Elizabeth

For more information, please contact:
Sam Matome Bopape
Cell: 082 318 5251

Pieter Swart
Cell: 082 612 7852

For comments, please contact:
Mukoni Ratshitanga
Spokesperson to the President
Tel: 012 300 5436
Cell: 082 300 3447

Issued by: The Presidency
19 August 2008