Who can forget where they were on Sunday February 11 1990 when Nelson Mandela strode out of prison in Paarl, travelled into Cape Town in an old Toyota Cressida and made his first speech as a free man from the balcony at the city hall?
Even if we weren't around, we've seen the photographs of Mandela using a pair of borrowed spectacles to read his speech, Cyril Ramaphosa holding the microphone, Walter Sisulu and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in the background.It's a scene that's about to be memorialised on that same Edwardian balcony with a life-size statue of the then 72-year-old Mandela, funded by the Western Cape government to the tune of around R1.7-million. It is due to be installed in March next year.There's even a statue of Mandela in Parliament Square, London, and a tapestry called Flying Madiba at Cape Town International Airport.
But talk of a national liberation heritage route, announced in 2011 by the National Heritage Council and the Department of Tourism, isn't exactly on everyone's lips.
The Western Cape government is ploughing ahead with its own Madiba heritage tourism route, which will include three prisons where he was held - Robben Island, Pollsmoor and Drakenstein Correctional Centre in Paarl (there's a statue of Madiba there as well) - as well as parliament and Cape Town city hall...