An exhibition honouring the 607 black South African soldiers who died when the SS Mendi sank on 21 February, 1917, will open at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum on Tuesday.
Minister in the Presidency, Jeff Radebe,was in the UK to pay tribute to the soldiers who perished 100 years ago when a large cargo steamship, Darro, collided with the SS Mendi in the English Channel.
Mendi sank killing 646 people, 607 of who were black South African troops. 139 were from the Eastern Cape, the second highest number of South African troops to perish in what is considered the “one of the 20th century's worst maritime disasters in UK waters.”
Speaking at a memorial service at Southampton's Hollybrook Cemetery, Radebe reportedly said that South Africans had many lessons to learn from the sinking of the SS Mendi.
Radebe joined the Princess Royal, Princess Anne, her husband Vice-Admiral Sir Timothy Lawrence and the Chief of the South African Navy Vice-Admiral Mosiwa Hlongwane, among other dignitaries at the cemetery "where more than 2 000 soldiers who died without graves because they perished at sea are memorialised."
In a statement the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum said that the SS Mendi had “become a rallying point in post-apartheid South African to recover the lost history of black soldiers and the role these men played in World War One”.
