GRAAFF-REINET NEWS - The Sobukwe Museum and Learning Centre, a project of the Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe Trust, located in uMasizakhe, Graaff-Reinet recently commemorated the birthday of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe who was born in Graaff-Reinet on 5 December 1924.
Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, affectionately known as Prof Sobukwe, is described as a "gentle, humble, deeply religious man with a brilliant intellect."
Prof Sobukwe, founding president of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), was one of South Africa's greatest liberation heroes who dedicated his life to the struggle for human rights and non-racialism and spoke of the need for black South Africans to "liberate themselves."
He believed that there is no "race" that is superior or inferior to another, "there is only one race to which we all belong and that is the human race, and therefore the word "race" has no plural form".
On the day of the commemoration of what would have been Prof Sobukwe's 97th birthday, the Sobukwe Museum and Learning Centre invited a group of local children to celebrate his birthday with them. In the morning the children were treated to an excursion to the Camdeboo National Park and the afternoon was spent making birthday cards and playing interactive educational games created by local youth who are in workplace training at the museum.
The children were taken through the interactive environmental installation in the entry passage of the museum where they planted their own seeds and learnt about their environmental rights.
The primary objective of the installation is to educate children whilst instilling a sense of love, belonging and unity.
Later they played the interactive Covid game produced by the museum's Craft-Tech Club last year, learning about Covid prevention in a collaborative and fun way. The children's environmental installation is a recently completed project 'Izwe Lethu/The Land is Ours," made possible through grant support received from the Goethe Institut's Global Project for Cultural and Creative Industries from German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).
The Sobukwe Museum and Learning Centre would like to extend its gratitude to the Craft-Tech Club makers and guides who played a pivotal role in the development and implementation of the project.
A big thank you also goes out to the local Pick n Pay who sponsored the lunch packs for the kids on this memorable day.
Children playing interactive educational games created by local youth who are in workplace training at the Sobukwe Museum and Learning Centre.
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