Living Legends to be honoured

ETHEKWINI Municipality has announced the 9th eThekwini Living Legends Awards awardees who will be honoured at a prestigious ceremony on Saturday at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre in Durban.

With the eThekwini Living Legends Awards, the municipality aims to recognise the outstanding contribution to nation building of past or current residents of eThekwini in various fields of human endeavour, while they are still alive.

These awards acknowledge individuals with outstanding achievements, and those who have demonstrated a sustained and extraordinary contribution to the municipality’s legacy in various categories of expertise.

The men and women that will be honoured were selected through a public nomination process, where members of the public submitted names to eThekwini Municipality. They were nominated in the fields of arts and culture, human rights, academia, science and technology.

In the arts and culture field, awardees are Dr Sazi Dlamini, Tu Nokwe, Professor Kate Wells and Cedric Nunn. In the sports field, Obed “3” Gumede is an awardee. For academia and human rights, awardees are Dr Naledi Pandor, Mac Maharaj, Lt Gen Vejay Ramlakan, Dr Imtiaz Sooliman and Alzina Zondi.

EThekwini Mayor Councillor Zandile Gumede said that having evolved into a fully-fledged social upliftment programme, from what was previously a one-day annual event, the eThekwini Living Legends Awards now forms part of the eThekwini legacy project.

“It is important for us to honour our living legends for their distinct achievements and contribution to the people of eThekwini and countrywide. Their achievements serve as an inspiration to our young generation. The municipality is in a process of building a multi-million rand central library that will house the Living Legends Museum.We want to ensure that this project becomes a lasting legacy so that generations to come can read about these extra ordinary men and women in our City,” said Gumede.