At the Aryan Benevolent Home in the sizable, primarily Indian township of Chatsworth, a massive wall painting including pictures of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Ahmed Kathrada, and a host of other South African leaders, both deceased and yet alive, has been unveiled.
Following the unrest in South Africa last year, renowned Indian-origin artist Nanda Soobben spent more than a month painting the mural as a demonstration of the unity among the country’s various communities, which helped usher in the democratic order in 1994 after years of white-minority apartheid rule.
‘The artwork, which was unveiled on Friday, aims to end the turmoil and create a non-racial society without the false accusations that circulated on social media and stoked the violence. It is intended to promote social harmony and demonstrate how South Africa’s many races made significant sacrifices to end apartheid,’ according to Soobben.
He remembered how a mural he had painted in New York over thirty years before had inspired him to create a comparable mural in South Africa.
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