Two of Nelson Mandela granddaughters have partnered with the Relate Trust in a bid to raise over R100-million towards job creation and literacy.

In a joint media briefing on Thursday‚ Princess Zaziwe Manaway and Princess Swati Dlamini-Mandela announced the launch of a Mandela Centenary Relate bracelet‚ which will retail for R50.

Dlamini-Mandela and Manaway are the directors of the company known as Long Walk to Freedom Brand.

The money raised would be used to pay makers of the bracelet‚ which include the elderly and the unemployed youth in townships from the Western Cape and Durban. The rest would be donated to charitable causes‚ which includes the Nelson Mandela Literacy Project‚ whose libraries are donated to schools in need.

Relate Trust has raised more than R50-million through its crowdfunding model of selling bracelets globally since 2010. “If every tax-paying South African bought one Mandela Centenary Relate bracelet‚ we would achieve our vision of raising R100-million in honour of what would have been Nelson Mandela’s 100th year‚” Relate CEO Neil Robinson said.

Robert Coutts of the Mandela Education Programme said the donation would assist the programme in ensuring that it continued to deliver portable libraries to reach more primary school children who were in need of reading materials.

Coutts said the literacy rate at Grade 5 level had been measured at 32% in the country. He said the schools that had been supplied with its libraries had passed the 50% mark in literacy for Grade 5s.

The programme provides a shipping container library which is fully stocked with a supply of reading materials. The programme plans to immediately deliver 20 libraries‚ which take six weeks to construct and deliver‚ to 20 schools where there was a desperate need for them. Coutts said there were also 74 other schools which also needed the libraries on an urgent basis.

The cost of the library is R235‚000‚ Coutts said.

Robinson said his organisation had not set a target of bracelets that could be made.

“There is no problem with supply as we have a network of elderly clubs which can meet the demand for bracelets‚” Robinson said.

He said the elderly people who made bracelets had a chance to earn an extra income of around R500 a month.

He said the 40 youths who were employed at Relate’s factory then package and ship the bracelets.

Manaway said her grandfather spent his whole life fighting for a just and equal society.

“Through these initiatives involving social enterprise companies‚ business and society leaders‚ we can see his dream realised‚” Manaway said.

Robinson encouraged companies to buy bracelets for their employees in support of the project.