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Nelson Mandela’s face once again lit up Trafalgar Square this week, projected on to Nelson’s column while the sound of his voice echoed out, calling for a “great generation” to end poverty – 20 years after he delivered that impassioned call to an audience of 22,000.
It was a message that resonated with the public, who began wearing white “Make Poverty History” wristbands, hit the front pages of newspapers and helped spur governments into expanding anti-poverty campaigns and agreeing to offer $50bn debt relief to Africa.
Rekindling Mandela’s energy was the goal of this week’s “light the way” event, which brought together schoolchildren, charity sector leaders, and politicians who renewed their pledge to defeat poverty.
“We need more hope and political drive today – more than we needed 20 years ago,” said Serah Makka, Africa executive director for the ONE campaign, the anti-poverty group that helped organise Mandela’s original speech and this week’s events.
“To look around the world today you can feel like it’s stagnating or regressing. It makes sense because we have this ambition to see more transformation in the world, and sometimes the incrementality [in changes] you see, just doesn’t give you enough energy,” said Makka. “But we need to resist the temptation because we need hope.”
The battle to tackle hunger and poverty has faltered in recent years after a series of shocks from the pandemic, the climate crisis and an increase in conflicts. An already bleak atmosphere caused by aid budget cuts by countries such as the UK has only been made worse by US president Donald Trump suddenly halting the work of USAid.
But Makka reminded the audience that there has been progress in the past 20 years, and that needs to be celebrated.
She highlighted that the number of people living on under $1 (80p) a day has fallen from 20% to 8.5% and there have also been reductions in the number of people living without safe sanitation and electricity.
“Days like today provide a much-needed opportunity to look back and consider what progress actually has been made. While much needs to be done, we must also recognise that hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty,” said Dr Sania Nishtar, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
The commemoration during the day took place in Central Hall Westminster, where charity leaders and decision makers gathered to remember Mandela’s address and its impact, while in the evening, music and fragments of his words played out in Trafalgar Square in celebration of the moment.
When Mandela came out of retirement to deliver the speech in 2005, wrapped up against the cold and leaning on a walking stick, he called for aid, fairer trade and the lifting of debt imposed on impoverished countries to end the “social evil” of poverty he said ranked alongside apartheid and slavery.
Despite a reduction in poverty levels, the fact that acute hunger persists and a new debt crisis faces low-income countries means those goals have not yet been met.
So it was in the spirit of an “imvuselelo” – a revival ceremony – that South African-born poet Nomakhwezi Becker switched between gentle singing in isiZulu and firmly delivered poetry in English.
“There was no way for me not to sing, and call on the spirits of all those who walked before us to boldly enter spaces of change and regeneration with me, as we replenish and remind those in this ongoing fight how needed their efforts and dreams are in order to sustain the aliveness of others,” said Becker.
“While there is so much exhaustion from the daily onslaught of difficult news and things that seem to be regressing around the world, there are so many of us rowing boats against the current to change this and events like this one are needed to remind us of this and shout out the names of those people so they are encouraged and visible enough to be rallied around.”
Although the UK government has yet to set a date to restore the country’s aid commitment from 0.5% of GDP, introduced by then chancellor Rishi Sunak in 2020, to the 0.7% goal set by the UN, the ONE campaign said a recent survey shows three-quarters of the British public believe the country has a responsibility to tackle global challenges such as poverty. Among gen Z, 37% believed the country should be doing more.
Adrian Lovett, the ONE campaign’s UK executive director, who spoke alongside Mandela in 2005, said these numbers were promising at a time when there do not appear to be public figures who can offer the same moral leadership that Mandela did.
“There is a quiet majority in this country that wants to see Britain do right by not only its own citizens, but by others around the world,” he said.
That sense of commitment to change was shared by some of the students invited to the commemoration from east London’s Langdon academy – from which students had stood on stage and spoken alongside Mandela in 2005.
“I can’t comment on 20 years ago because I didn’t exist but I can say that in maybe 10 or 20 years from now we can say we made poverty history because of Nelson Mandela,” a student said to a cheering audience.
