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President Cyril Ramaphosa.
As part of the official opening of the Nelson Mandela Rules Training Academy, the Portfolio Committee on Correctional Services is visiting the Drakenstein Correctional Centre in Paarl, in the Western Cape.
President Cyril Ramaphosa is set to open the academy on Thursday.
Today marks 36 years since Mandela’s release from prison.
The facility was formerly known as Victor Verster Prison, where Nelson Mandela spent his final years before his release. He later became the country’s first democratically elected president.
Ramaphosa is accompanied by the Minister of Correctional Services Dr Pieter Groenewald as well as Sports, Arts and Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie.
President @CyrilRamaphosa officially opens the Nelson Mandela Rules Training Academy at the Drakenstein Correctional Facility.
The Drakenstein Correctional Facility, formerly known as Victor Verster Prison, holds profound historical significance as the place from which Nelson… pic.twitter.com/oH83hrSkwJ
— The Presidency 🇿🇦 (@PresidencyZA) February 11, 2026
The Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund says it wants to move this moment beyond commemoration and into present-day relevance.
Following his release on 11 February 1990 from Victor Verster Prison in Cape Town, Madiba formed the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund in 1995.
The Fund has since evolved to respond to the changing realities facing children, families and communities.
The fund’s Samke Mnguni explains how the former president founded the organisation.
“We now know to be fact that Nelson Mandela while taking a walk in Cape Town saw street children without care and without warmth. It was a winter’s night and he decided that these children needed some sort of response and as he would do, he called amongst several people to start fundraising for the formation of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund and gave of his own salary as well,” explains Mnguni.
