10 December 2013
Premier Jay Weatherill has this morning signed the Nelson Mandela memory book at the University of South Australia’s Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre.
Hawke Centre Director Elizabeth Ho says she is delighted the Premier was the first South Australian to sign the book, which is available to all members of the community to record their appreciation of Mandela’s life and his outstanding contribution to reconciliation, social justice and peace.
“I encourage the whole South Australian community to sign the memory book, which is in the Kerry Packer Civic Gallery from today until Friday 20 December, from 9am to 4pm,” Ms Ho says.
A copy will be sent to the Nelson Mandela Foundation in South Africa as a token of esteem from the Hawke Centre, and from all those who have recorded their tributes, while another copy will be held by the Centre.
Nelson Mandela accepted the role of International Patron of the Hawke Centre in 2001.
The Kerry Packer Civic Gallery was established in 2007 by the Hawke Centre to celebrate the global spirit of social justice engendered by Mandela, and was generously endowed by the family of the late Kerry Packer. The gallery is a tribute to reconciliation, affirming both Mandela’s work and the Australian reconciliation movement to bring Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people together, a movement strongly promoted by UniSA.
The gallery also pays tribute to the Kaurna people, the first nation to inhabit the land on which the Hawke Centre sits, and was created with the advice and support of Kaurna elders.
Mandela will continue to be honoured in the Gallery through the Mandela Wall, a major feature of the space, and also remembered in the UniSA Nelson Mandela Lecture in the Hawke Centre’s program.
The Kerry Packer Civic Gallery is on the third level of the Hawke Building, UniSA City West Campus, 55 North Terrace, near the City West tram stop.
Media contact: Kelly Stone office 8302 0963 mobile 0417 861 832 email Kelly.stone@unisa.edu.au
