UF students, professors to honor Nelson Mandela today

UF lecturer Kole Odutola will read a letter today addressed to Nelson Mandela.

The letter is what Odutola would say to Mandela if he were alive today.

“When you remember the dead, it is not for the dead,” the Yoruba lecturer in the department of languages, literatures and cultures said. “It is really for the ones alive. The ears of the dead are the eyes of the living.”

Organizations at UF will host the third-annual Mandela Day today at noon in Pugh Hall to commemorate the life and legacy of Mandela, a South African politician who led the anti-apartheid movement.

The event is being put on by the Center for African Studies, the African Student Union and the Bob Graham Center for Public Service, wrote Agnes Leslie, the outreach director for the Center for African Studies, in an email.

Faculty and students will speak about Mandela’s legacy and how it carries over today, Leslie said. After the speeches, the group will march while singing and dancing to the site of a tree that was planted outside Grinter Hall during the first Mandela Day. The group will continue to perform as a tribute to Mandela, she said.

Odutola said he was recruited for the event from his former students who knew about his passion for African issues.

He contacted about six South African women, who either admired or were upset about Mandela and had them write letters, which he will read.

UF history professor Paul Ortiz, who helped organize the event, will speak about Mandela’s role as a leader in social movements.

Mandela was a believer in mass action, which helped gather global attention about the apartheid, he said.

Ortiz remembers the massive support across the U.S. for the anti-apartheid movement while he was in college. His speech will discuss the movement’s roots, successes and Mandela’s role with it.

“He was seen really in many ways as the leader of a movement in exile,” Ortiz said. “The anti-apartheid movement was something we could support. It was also something where it really taught a lot of us what a democratic social movement could be, how powerful it could be, how inspirational it could be.”