BRICS teachers take root in Umbilo
A tree planting ceremony at Resistance Park honoured five BRICS teachers.
FIVE trees were planted adjacent to Resistance Park in Umbilo this month, to honour BRICS teachers.
Russian delegates from BRICS including Lyudmila Sekacheva, president of the regional public organisation, joined Paddy Kearney, Chairman of the Gandhi Development Trust, and Habimun Singh, chair of the Sastri College Alumni Society, along with Parks Department staff to plant the indigenous South African trees to commemorate each BRICS teacher – Confucius (China), Mahatma Gandhi (India), Tolstoy (Russia), Nelson Mandela (South Africa), and Baron de Rio Branco (Brazil). BRICS is an acronym for the grouping of the world’s leading emerging economies, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
Plaques for each of the trees will be made up and placed by the trees in memory of these men.
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“This is hallowed ground, and it is of historical significance that trees of the BRICS nations are planted here. Resistance Park is the site of the 1946 passive resistance movement. Gandhi’s Satyagraha movement with its philosophy of ethical non-violence took seed in 1913 and took root at Resistance Park in 1946,” said Singh. The historic Durban anti-apartheid site in Umbilo Road was opened by Nelson Mandela in 2002.
Sekacheva, while planting trees, honoured each man who was of great significance in each country and to South Africa.
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