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Photographic prints showing the visit of Nelson Mandela to the Church of St. Mary of the Angels, Athlone, Cape Town, South Africa, on 12 September 1993. Mandela was accompanied by Allan Boesak. Some of the photographs are annotated on the reverse by the donors: James P. Rigney and Fr. Macartan Hyland OFM Cap. The photographs were printed in 'The Cape Argus' newspaper. The file also includes:
• A description of the circumstances surrounding Mandela’s visit to Athlone Parish Church by Fr. Wilfrid Aherne OFM Cap. (1923-2004).
• An annotated copy of the sermon preached on the occasion by Fr. Wilfrid Aherne OFM Cap. A copy of Mandela’s brief address after communion referring to the support offered by the local congregation during the apartheid era
• The welcome address given by Huxley Joshua, a prominent member of the ANC in the locality.
• Documents (including a copy newspaper cutting from 'The Southern Cross', 26 Sept. 1993) referring to the controversy over Mandela’s taking of communion during the Mass.

Views of Parow parish, Flats District, Cape Town, South Africa. The prints are annotated on the reverse:
‘This is Parow in the Cape Flats. We could build a church and convent in the foreground. … The orphanage is in the distance’.
‘Parow / the ground in front is Vicariate-owned. Building on left is church. The other buildings are the orphanage’.
‘Three of the coloured orphans at the little Oratory, Parow’.
‘Fr. Kelly’s Church in the heart of the Flats. Typical flat country with occasional roads thro it. But he has very few residents in such a place. He is very old now and I expect we shall be asked to take it later. He has his own house and four mission churches attached – all built by his own parishioners’ hands’.

Photographs showing the visit of Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd (1901-1966), Minister of Bantu Affairs in the South African government (he was later Prime Minister), to the Holy Family Mission at Katima Mulilo in the Caprivi Strip (situated in present-day Namibia but then under South African control). A typescript note is extant in the file. It reads: ‘The purpose of his visit to the Mission was to assess the possible implications of implanting the infamous Bantu Education Act into the Caprivi where, at the time, all the schools were administered by the Capuchins with the aid of a very meagre subsidy from the S.A. government. Dr. Verwoerd (the “architect of apartheid”, was assassinated during his reign as Prime Minister) enforced the Bantu Education Act, in the late 1950s, as a means of preventing black South Africans from receiving an education anywhere near the standard enjoyed by other ethnic groups, e.g. whites and coloureds’. One of the photographs shows Verwoerd (identified with an 'X') with various religious including Bishop Timothy Phelim O’Shea OFM Cap. and Fr. Bartholomew Prendiville OFM Cap., superior of the Katima Mulilo Mission. See also CA AMI/2/10/3/110.