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This lesson is topical for July as Mandela Day is celebrated on July 18th. On Mandela Day, people aim to give 67 minutes of their time to helping others (to celebrate the 67 years of service of Mandela's life. Students will learn about Mandela and then discuss ideas for projects to help others. You could take this forward with your class so that they actually choose one project and do it, then write about it later.
Topic
Nelson Mandela, Mandela Day
Level
B1+
Time
60 minutes
Aims
To develop integrated skills: speaking and reading around the topic of Nelson Mandela and Mandela Day
Materials
All the materials can be downloaded below

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This lesson is topical for July as Mandela Day is celebrated on July 18th. On Mandela Day, people aim to give 67 minutes of their time to helping others (to celebrate the 67 years of service of Mandela's life. Students will learn about Mandela and then discuss ideas for projects to help others.

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The multi-coloured flag of modern South Africa is a symbol of its post-apartheid rebirth. But while Nelson Mandela led the country on a "long walk" to freedom, the creation of the flag 20 years ago was a frantic sprint by an unsung hero, writes Xin Fan.

On a Saturday night at the end of February 1994 Fred Brownell's phone rang. The voice on the other end asked him to get a new national flag designed - within a week.

"It scared the living daylights out of me," says Brownell, now 74 and living in retirement in Pretoria.

Brownell was state herald, and had long known that the emerging new South Africa would need a new flag, but until this point he had not been asked to play a central role.

Initially, members of the public had been asked for their ideas. Some 7,000 sketches had been sent in, but none was judged appropriate. Then the authorities had turned to design studios. That too proved fruitless.

Dad, use your brain! People will stand that on its head and turn it into the nuclear peace sign
Brownell's daughter, Claire

The months had passed by and now the first democratic elections - when the new flag was expected to be fluttering in the South African breeze - were little more than eight weeks away. Hence the urgent Saturday night call to Brownell.

Fortunately, he had already given the subject some thought.

He had been asking himself for some time what the new South African flag should look like. But his sketches had all ended up in the wastepaper basket until one day in August 1993, when he sat listening to an "interminable speech" at an international flag conference in Zurich.

"My mind started wandering," he recalls. "And then it struck me - aren't we looking for convergence and unification?" The convergence of the disparate groups within South African society, and their unification in one democratic state.

He flipped over the conference programme and started sketching. Three arms came in from the flagpole side of the flag (the "hoist") and became one.

"I was struck by the extent it resonated with what Mandela had in mind. 'Yes, it might work!' I thought," Brownell remembers.

His first idea was for the three-pronged shape to be coloured red, with green and blue at top and bottom, but he soon concluded it looked better with the colours switched around - the three-pronged shape in green, red at the top and blue at the bottom.

But the flag needed other colours too. "I think one must realise that red, white and blue or orange white and blue harked back to South Africa's colonial heritage," Brownell says.

Gold was the first he added, then black - both colours found on the flags of the African National Congress, the Zulus' Inkatha Freedom Party, and various other political groupings in South Africa.

The final design also used a particular orangey shade of red known as chilli red, which is mid-way between the colours of the British and Dutch colonial-era flags but at the same time reminiscent of South Africa's coral trees, Brownell says, and the flat hats worn by married Zulu women.

A design had been sent to Mandela by fax - somebody on the other end had to run down to the stationery shop and grab some colouring pencils
Fred Brownell

The only other change to the design was made at the suggestion of Brownell's daughter, Claire, a young schoolteacher.

"Dad, use your brain!" she said. "People will stand that on its head and turn it into the nuclear peace sign. The middle leg must go."

The three arms converging into one, became just two arms converging into one.

So when Brownell got the call asking him to have the issue "solved within the week" he was not starting completely from scratch.

In the end it came down to five proposals, two of them Brownell's. Of the others, one was based on an idea from the ANC, another came to a member of the committee Brownell had hastily convened in the middle of a plane flight.

The choice was put to State President FW de Klerk, who said it was not a decision he could take alone and called an impromptu cabinet meeting. "I noticed their eyes", says Brownell. "They were being drawn to my design."

Sure enough it was one of his drawings that was selected. Officials then contacted ANC negotiator Cyril Ramaphosa, and a tense wait ensued. His approval finally came through later that afternoon.

Many years later Brownell learned that Ramaphosa too had not wished to act alone, and had contacted Nelson Mandela, then in Rustenberg in the north-east of the country, to get his personal blessing.

"A design had been sent to Mandela by fax. Somebody on the other end had to run down to the stationery shop, grab some colouring pencils, and colour in the flag," says Brownell.

Luckily, Brownell says, "Mandela was happy with it."

That same day, 15 March 1994, the design was unanimously adopted by the Transitional Executive Council, which asked President de Klerk to issue a proclamation adopting the national flag. But for reasons that Brownell still cannot explain, the proclamation was made only on 20 April, seven days before the election.

During the wait, Brownell says, "lots of us were going frantic".

"Flag manufacturers were screaming high and low. South Africa could only produce 5,000 flags per week, and at least around 100,000 were needed for April 27th to fill every flagpole in the country."

Some historical flags

Manufacturers in the Netherlands helped save the day, although not before exhausting Europe's entire stock of flag material and having to import it from Japan.

"Public reaction was muted, originally," recalls Brownell. "But once Mandela was inaugurated on 10 May, with the flags draped over Union Buildings in Pretoria, people warmed to the fact they had a new president, with a new flag to go with him.

"The level of acceptance exceeded my wildest expectations," he says.

Asked what might have prompted him to come up with his initial three-pronged design, Brownell reflects that it was probably embedded in his mind from childhood.

"I grew up in the Anglican church and this particular design was in fact incorporated into the classical chasubles [outer vestments] worn by priests in both the Catholic and Anglican church," he says.

"In recent years chasubles have changed very much, but that was the classic design."

Twenty years on, Brownell is quietly pleased with his work.

He still sees the "convergence and unification" of a diverse country reflected in the flag, and insists there is no-one in South Africa who does not recognise in it colours they hold dear.

"I feel happy to have contributed in some small way."
Photographs and video by Kelvin Brown (except for the AFP picture of Nelson Mandela) Follow @BBCNewsMagazine on Twitter and on Facebook

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The multi-coloured flag of modern South Africa is a symbol of its post-apartheid rebirth. But while Nelson Mandela led the country on a "long walk" to freedom, the creation of the flag 20 years ago was a frantic sprint by an unsung hero, writes Xin Fan.

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Resource site for ESL teachers. Site de Ressources pour l'anglais en lycée et collège de G.Bourrachot .

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Nelson MANDELA - Lesson plans - Cartoons - Webquests - Videos - Songs - ESL Resources

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Nelson Mandela Quiz "Nelson Mandela spent most of his life fighting apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid was a system of laws created by the South African government to discriminate against its black citizen. Mandela was arrested for protesting the laws and was in prison for 27 years.

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A l'occasion de l'anniversaire de la mort de Nelson Mandela, tout le dossier sur l'Afrique du Sud a été mis à jour (pages Nelson Mandela, South Africa, Invictus, Long Walk to Freedon, Gun Culture in South Afriaca...)
" To be free is not merely to cast off one's chains but to live in one way that respects and enhances the freedom of others" N. Mandela
( Page mise à jour le 5/12/2014)

Tributes to Mandela

Cartoons

Front pages
Front pages published the days after Mandela's death on Newseum's front pages]

News reports

Songs and poems

Speeches and articles

Mandela will never, ever be your minstrel. by Musa Okwonga (Article avec enregistrement audio)
Un article qui en va pas dans le sens de la majorité et qui dénonce une récupération.
"You will say that Mandela was not about race. You will say that Mandela was not about politics. You will say that Mandela was about nothing but one love, you will try to reduce him to a lilting reggae tune. "Let's get together, and feel alright." Yes, you will do that."
" You didn't break him in life, and you won't shape him in death. You will try, wherever you are, and you will fail."

His life

Speeches and interviews

His autobiography : Long Walk to Freedom (Book and Film)

Consultez notre page dédiée

Resources in school books

Compilées par Fabienne Gosselin sur eTeachNet
Textes ou des citations de Mandela dans différents manuels :

Trackers 2nde : p. 88

XL Tle : p. 74-75

CrossRoads 2nde : p. 108

Tracks Tle série techno : p. 58

Plain Sailing 1ère : p. 134

Prime Time 1ère : p.101

Bridges 1ère : p.41

Remembering Nelson Mandela (Online English lesson)
Activité de compréhension en ligne à partir d'une vidéo de VOA (YouTube, 5'29")

Activities

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A l'occasion de l'anniversaire de la mort de Nelson Mandela, tout le dossier sur l'Afrique du Sud a été mis à jour (pages Nelson Mandela, South Africa, Invictus, Long Walk to Freedon, Gun Culture in South Afriaca...)

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séquence anglais nelson mandela - Google Search

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La séquence pédagogique comprend deux étapes pouvant correspondre à trois ... www. nelsonmandela.org, puis cliquer sur " Nelson Mandela Foundation " en haut ... Le site des langues de l'académie de Dijon (rubrique " Anglais, dossiers ...

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Try the online quiz, reading, listening, and activities on grammar, spelling and vocabulary for this lesson on Zzzzz. Click on the links above or see the activities below this article:

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READ

Nelson Mandela was one of the most loved and respected people in the world. For countless reasons he was and remains a huge hero. He was a person from whom we can all learn many lessons. He experienced many things in his nine decades, from being tortured to becoming president of the country he loved. After retiring, he continued to travel the world, helping people and raising awareness of global issues.

Nelson was born in 1918 into a South Africa that was divided along black and white racial lines. He said he had a wonderful childhood and was a keen runner and boxer. He learnt more of the terrible apartheid system when he studied to become a lawyer. This led to his campaigning for equal rights and his involvement in the African National Congress (ANC), which he later became the leader of.

The South African government did its best to keep Mandela from spreading his message of equality for blacks and racial unity. It put him in prison for 27 years. He became famous around the world as an icon of the struggle for freedom in South Africa. Rock stars, actors, politicians and ordinary people campaigned to free him and end apartheid. He was released from prison in 1990 and the world rejoiced.

Nelson Mandela's call for racial reconciliation won him the hearts of millions. He also won the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1993, and over 250 more awards. A year later, he became his country's first ever black president and served in office until 1999. In his retirement, he continued to tirelessly campaign for many global causes until old age slowed him down. He died on the 5th of December, 2013, aged 95.

Sources: http://www.wikipedia.org/ and assorted biographies.

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Try the online quiz, reading, listening, and activities on grammar, spelling and vocabulary for this lesson on Zzzzz. Click on the links above or see the activities below this article: Your browser does not support this audio player. Nelson Mandela was one of the most loved and respected people in the world.