I am certain that quite a few among us will remember the important words the late President Nelson Mandela spoke at the launch of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund in May 1995, when he said:
“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.
“We come from a past in which the lives of our children were assaulted and devastated in countless ways. It would be no exaggeration to speak of a national abuse of a generation by a society which it should have been able to trust.
“As we set about building a new South Africa, one of our highest priorities must therefore be our children. The vision of a new society that guides us should already be manifest in the steps we take to address the wrong done to our youth and to prepare for their future. Our actions and policies, and the institutions we create, should be eloquent with care, respect and love.”
Happily, the critical message which President Mandela was communicating found expression in the Constitution which was adopted the following year, in 1996.
The Constitution, our supreme law, includes this important decree binding on our society that:
“A child’s best interests are of paramount importance in every matter concerning the child.”
This refers to a very sizeable portion of our population, constituting ⅓ or 33% of the South African population, totalling about 21 million individuals.
This one-third is the most vulnerable section of our population and therefore entitled to the “family care or parental care, and the basic nutrition, shelter, basic health care services and social services” which our Constitution prescribes.
It would therefore be correct that today we ask ourselves the question, what do we say about the soul of the nation, thirty-two years after its liberation from three-and-a-half centuries of colonial and apartheid white settler domination, on the basis of what has happened to this one-third of our population.
Here, I must say a few words about poverty.
In a July 2020 Report on Child Poverty in South Africa, Statistics South Africa made the very worrying statement that “more than six out of ten children (62,1%) are identified as multidimensionally poor”.
A more recent Statssa Report on “Poverty Trends in South Africa…” presented a more hopeful picture when it said: “In South Africa, children (0 to 17 years) remain one of the most vulnerable groups in the country, making up 43,1% of the poor population in 2023.”
To underline the continuing seriousness of this problem, this Report goes no to say that “Rural child poverty fell from 86,9% in 2006 to 64,3% in 2023…, indicating that more than six out of ten rural children were still living in poverty in 2023.”
In this context, we should recall President Mandela’s words in May 1996 during the launch of the National Programme of Action for Children and Report on Child Poverty, when he said:
“Having a specific integrated programme to ensure the survival, protection and development of South Africa’s children is therefore a vital element in building an economically dynamic and healthy nation. Children can be our spearhead for attacking poverty, reinforcing human rights, and accelerating economic growth and development…”
Obviously, it would be difficult to claim that the soul of the nation is informed by the philosophy of ubuntu when it still has so many millions of children living in poverty.
Of course, it is obvious that we cannot seriously consider the Situation of Children in South Africa outside the context of society as a whole.
In this context, I must make the observation which I trust that all of us will take seriously, that the situation of the children could have been better if it were not for certain interventions which were made to ensure that democratic South Africa fails.
Here, let me quote somebody I have cited on other instances before. This is Dr John Endres, the CEO of the South African Institute of Race Relations.
Addressing a meeting in the US in 2023, Dr Endres said:
“The period since the 1994 transition (in South Africa) can be divided into two ages…South Africa’s first age, from 1994 to 2007, was marked by considerable progress across a range of indicators. GDP grew at an average rate of 3.6%. The number of people with jobs increased from 8 million to 14 million, and the average GDP per capita increased by almost 40%, from R55 000 per year to R76 000 per year in real terms, after adjusting for inflation.”
The scholar and researcher, Dr Frans Cronje, added to this when he was interviewed on 24 November 2025. Among other things he said:
“In the period 1994 to 2009, under ANC-led governments, there were massive improvements in the basic living standards of millions of people. The fiscal position strengthened in a manner which showed that the living standards picture would retransform fundamentally…
“At the same time as she was doing wonders on the jobs matter, democratic South Africa rolled out the most expansive welfare programme of any emerging market…
“No emerging market has ever matched the scale of the service delivery successes recorded in South Africa’s first decade and a bit after 1994…
“In this context, forensic study says that if South Africa’s rate of economic growth had continued at what it was between 2004 and 2007, today the unemployment rate would not be over 30%, but would be closer to 10%.”
Now I will revert back to Dr Endres and what he said in 2023. You will recall that he spoke about South Africa’s Age One. After that, he went on to say:
“The second age started around 2008 and we are now at the tail end of it…By contrast, for the period 2008 to 2022 the average GDP growth rate was a lacklustre 1.2%. The number of people with jobs increased by barely a million over a period of 14 years, while the population grew by 10 million over the same period. GDP per capita declined by R1 600, as people became poorer in real terms. The unemployment rate has crept up over the years and now sits at an astonishing 32.9%…Investment trends are downwards, with gross fixed capital formation as share of GDP climbing during the first age, reaching a level of 21.6% in 2008, before declining in the second age, dropping to as low as 13.1% in 2022.”
Naturally, the question arises – why are Ages One and Two diametrically opposed to each other?
Last year, in September, the prestigious Stellenbosch University Bureau for Economic Research, BER, published an article by Roy Havemann in which he tried to answer this question, having observed the sustained growth in productivity during Dr Endres’ Age One.
Dr Havemann wrote:
“South Africa’s economic growth slowed significantly from 2010…How did this happen?…The first place to look in explaining this dramatic fall-off in productivity growth might be to ask whether there was a reversal of the things that supported the initial strong performance. Indeed, the most significant change was not the global financial crisis (which South Africa weathered remarkably well), but a change in the country’s president.
“A hallmark of this period was state capture – later defined by the Zondo Commission of Inquiry as “when private actors influence a state’s decision-making processes to their own advantage by providing illicit private gains to public officials”. A set of prominent economists even went so far as to publish a research piece entitled “Betrayal of the promise: how South Africa is being stolen” (Bhorat et al. 2017). The South African economy may indeed have been stolen.”
Relating to this same matter, when I discussed South Africa @30 in April 2024 in a public lecture, I said:
“…at the heart of many of the problems our country faces lies the brute reality of a counter-revolutionary intervention which began some years ago.
“Whereas the central objective of the counter-revolution was to defeat the ANC and its NDR programme, its intervention has caused enormous damage to the country as a whole and visited much suffering to millions of our people.
“I believe that this situation makes it incumbent on our people as a whole to act together to address the harm caused by the counter-revolution, first of all by answering the question of what is to be done to undo the damage caused by the counter-revolution…
“Consistent with this approach, I suggest that to respond to the enormous challenges created by the counter-revolution, our people should convene in a new and truly inclusive National Dialogue to answer the question – what is to be done?”
I am very glad that despite some unnecessary hiccups with regard to the convening of this critically important National Dialogue, work is in progress to ensure that it starts as soon as practically possible.
I have no doubt that one of the major items on the agenda of the National Dialogue will be the matter which this Fund is about, the future of the children of South Africa!
Undoubtedly, this Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund will play a central role in helping to shape the outcome of that National Dialogue discussion about our country’s children.
In this context we recall what President Mandela said at the launch of this Fund that:
“The Children’s Fund therefore has a special importance. It includes, but goes far beyond, the immediate relief it will give to young people deprived of what should be their right: amongst other things, a home, formal education, freedom from detention.
“It is concerned, too, with helping open opportunities that have been denied, as well as developing the potential in our young people to play a major role in the reconstruction and development of our country…
“From this follow certain requirements concerning the nature of the Fund and its activities.
“It means that it should be an example to all our institutions and organisations in how it conducts its affairs, in its integrity, its probity and openness. The distinguished character of its Trustees and Management leaves no room for doubt that this will be so…”
This year, 2026, we celebrate thirty years of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, and it also marks thirty years since the adoption of our Constitution on 8 May 1996 – two anniversaries and one question: have we, in three decades, truly honoured our commitment to the children of this country? Or have we, as a society that has become eloquent in the language of care but struggles to put it into practice, mistaken words for action?
In this regard, it is important that, as has been said, we must go back to basics. To do this means that we must fully internalise the understanding that millions of our people engaged in a protracted both to achieve political emancipation as well as realise liberation from poverty and underdevelopment.
It is within this context that we must position the important work this Fund has been doing for three decades.
Adopted by the ANC and its allies in 1994, the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) says:
“No political democracy can survive and flourish if the mass of our people remain in poverty, without land, without tangible prospects for a better life. Attacking poverty and deprivation must therefore be the first priority of a democratic government…
“The RDP is focused on our people’s most immediate needs, and it relies, in turn, on their energies to drive the process of meeting these needs. Regardless of race or sex, or whether they are rural or urban, rich or poor, the people of South Africa must together shape their own future. Development is not about the delivery of goods to a passive citizenry. It is about active involvement and growing empowerment.”
The RDP vision assumes particular force when it finds expression in our national Constitution.
For instance, what we call caregiving is not, in a constitutional democracy, an act of charity. It is an act of justice. And the failure to provide it is not merely a developmental shortfall. It is, in the precise legal sense, a breach of our supreme law.
Section 28 of our Bill of Rights is unambiguous. As we have already indicated, it says that Every child has the right to family or parental care, or appropriate alternative care; to basic nutrition, shelter, basic health care services and social services; to be protected from maltreatment, neglect, abuse and degradation. And Section 28(2) – the governing principle – declares: a child’s best interests are of paramount importance in every matter concerning the child.
Paramount means that the supreme law of this Republic places the child’s welfare above all other interests in every matter affecting her life. Our Constitution fundamentally aspires to be a caregiving document. It does not just prohibit cruelty to children; it also imposes a positive obligation – on the state, on institutions, and on all of us – to ensure that every child is held, nourished, and protected.
It therefore recalls what the RDP document says that “Development is not about the delivery of goods to a passive citizenry. It is about active involvement and growing empowerment.”
This speaks directly to the outstanding patriots who have and continue to lead, manage and operationalise this excellent Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund.
I want tonight to acknowledge by name those who have been the caregivers of this institution, who have held it, sustained it, and arranged its affairs around the child. History honours what we choose to name. These names deserve to be spoken.
Nelson Mandela was not merely the inspiration for this Fund. He was its first and founding Chairperson, a title he retained throughout his post-presidential life until his death on 5 December 2013. He did not just lend his name and then withdraw; he presided over it. He spoke at its dinners, wrote to its donors, and championed its cause in correspondence with heads of state and leading industry figures. The Fund was not a mere item in his legacy; it was a living expression of the covenant he had made with the children of this country, and he cared for it as a guardian tends to what is entrusted to him.
When Madiba was no longer with us, the Board of Trustees turned to a woman whose life had been equally dedicated to the legal protection of children. Justice Jennifer Yvonne Mokgoro was appointed by Madiba himself to our inaugural Constitutional Court in October 1994, becoming one of the founding justices of South Africa’s new constitutional order. Upon retiring from the bench in 2009, she brought her formidable intellect and deep constitutional conscience to her role as chairperson of this Fund, a position she held for many years with the quiet authority of someone who understood that a child’s best interests are not sentimental but legal. Justice Mokgoro passed away on 9 May 2024. She was a servant of justice in its fullest sense. We honour her tonight, and we continue to mourn her.
When Justice Mokgoro was incapacitated following a road accident in April 2023, the Fund did not falter. It turned to Ms Nana Magomola, a trustee of this Fund since 2001, who had been appointed by Madiba himself and assumed the role of Interim Chairperson with the calmness of someone who had been preparing for such a moment for twenty years. Nana Magomola is a woman of remarkable breadth: former Director-General in the Office of the Premier of the North West Province, an executive at Eskom, chairperson of numerous boards, and throughout it all, a caregiver of this institution. When the Fund needed her most, she was already there.
Today, the chairpersonship rests with Mr Mpho Makwana, former Chairman of Nedbank Group and Eskom, adjunct professor, and long-standing trustee of this very Fund. His governance record reflects the calibre that this institution has always required for those entrusted with its stewardship. Under his leadership, and with the purposeful guidance of our CEO, Dr Linda Ncube-Nkomo, the Fund begins its next chapter with the same seriousness of purpose that Madiba founded it.
Alongside the chairs, I must recognise those trustees without whom no institution can bridge the gap between vision and execution. Advocate Marumo Moerane SC has served as Managing Trustee since the Fund’s founding in 1995, spanning over thirty years of continuous service, longer than any other governance figure in this institution. He embodies its living institutional memory and acts as its constitutional conscience, ensuring it remains true to its founding purpose through four chairpersonships and all the challenges of South African public life.
Justice Dikgang Moseneke – Deputy Chief Justice of South Africa, a former Robben Island prisoner, and one of the most outstanding legal minds of our democracy – served as the Fund’s founding Deputy Chairperson. He stood at Madiba’s right hand in the governance of this institution, just as he had stood alongside many others in shaping our democracy. His contribution to children’s rights in this country is reflected both in the constitutional text and on the boardroom floor with equal significance.
And the CEOs, for no vision is realised without those who translate it into programmes, partnerships and the unglamorous work of accountability. Sibongile Mkhabela built the operational architecture of this Fund from its earliest years, serving as CEO for nearly two decades; she remains one of the most consequential figures in the history of South African civil society. Kone Gugushe guided the Fund through the turbulence of the early 2020s.
I do not mention them just for ceremony. I mention them because they answer the question that cynicism always asks: who actually does the work? These people have. These people do. And thanks to them, the children of this country are better cared for than they would otherwise be.
I also wish to recognise the international dimension. We are here with ambassadors and high commissioners, as well as Dr Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, who has dedicated her life to fighting for women and children not only in South Africa but globally. The failure to realise children’s rights is not a crisis limited to this country; from Gaza to the displacement camps in South Sudan, and to the one-hundred-and-fifty Iranian school girls who died on the very first day of the current war between the US and Israel on one hand, and Iran on the other, the world is engaged in a systematic failure to protect its youngest citizens. The vision of this Fund, the belief that the caregiver and the child must be at the centre of our political and institutional life, is a vision the world desperately needs.
I am also glad that we have with us this evening the Child President of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Parliament, Ms Amogelang Mashele,
Junior Mayor of the City of Johannesburg and Junior Councillor Kamohelo Malikane.
Your presence here confirms that the Children’s Fund is living up to its solemn obligation to empower the young so that, as President Mandela wanted, they play their invaluable role in determining our nation’s destiny.
I must also recognise and thank the many donors, at home and abroad, who have contributed the resources to the Children’s Fund which have enabled it to carry out its sterling work.
To all of you we say – nangamso!
We celebrate tonight, and we should. Thirty years of this Fund is a remarkable achievement.
In 1993, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Madiba said:
“The children must, at last, play in the open veld, no longer tortured by the pangs of hunger or threatened with the scourge of ignorance, molestation and abuse, and no longer required to engage in deeds whose gravity exceeds the demands of their tender years.”
That was the promise. The gap between that promise and the lived reality of the South African child in 2026 should motivate us to act, not merely to speak more refined words about it. However, the gap has narrowed because of this Fund. This institution has been, for three decades, a guardian to this country’s most vulnerable children. Lives have been transformed. Rights have been partly restored. Children who might otherwise have been lost have been protected.
Our shared task is to add ever more strength to the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund as well as undertake the necessary mobilisation, including through the National Dialogue, to ensure that all-society joins hands with the Children’s Fund to realise the dream and vision which Madiba kept alive until his dying day.
*This is an edited version of an address by Thabo Mbeki, former President of SA and Patron of the Thabo Mbeki Foundation on the occasion of the 30th anniversary Gala Dinner of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund in Johannesburg.
