News

Germans break down symbolic wall in SA

November 10, 2009 Edition 2

JOHANNESBURG: A section of the wall surrounding the German cultural institute in Johannesburg came tumbling down yesterday as Germany used the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall to try to break down barriers in South Africa.

Germany's ambassador to South Africa, Dieter W Haller, used a digger to knock down part of the high wall that surrounds the Goethe-Institut in front of an approving audience of around 300 people.

Visitors arriving for an evening of music and exhibitions picked their way across the rubble through a gaping hole in the wall.

Haller, in a speech, drew a line between the fall of the Berlin Wall, the release from prison three months later of former South African president Nelson Mandela and the country's first democratic elections in 1994. - Sapa-dpa