Press Release from the Mayor of London's Office:

The statue of Nelson Mandela will be unveiled in Parliament Square on Wednesday 29 August, following a long campaign led by Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, over seven years.

The prominent position of the nine foot bronze statue, facing the Houses of Parliament, will honour Nelson Mandela as one of the greatest fighters for freedom in the 20th century. It will also be a permanent statement of London's abhorrence of Apartheid and every other form of racism.

The unveiling will evoke a remark of Nelson Mandela himself, which he probably never thought he would see realised:

'Oliver (Tambo) and I saw the sights of the city that had once commanded nearly two-thirds of the globe. Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament. When I gloried in the beauty of these buildings, I was ambivalent about what they represented. When we saw the statue of General Smuts near Westminster Abbey, Oliver and I joked that perhaps someday there would be a statue of us in its stead.' (Nelson Mandela, 'A Long Walk To Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela')

The unveiling ceremony will be attended by the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone and members of the Mandela Statue Fund, including actor and director Sir Richard Attenborough and Wendy Woods, widow of anti-apartheid campaigner Donald Woods, widow of anti-apartheid campaigner Donald Woods, who conceived the idea of placing a statue of Mandela in central London.

The Mayor said: 'Nelson Mandela symbolises everything noble in the human spirit. He stood firm against one of the most ghastly forms of racism ever devised through decades of isolation and imprisonment. I hope that in honouring Nelson Mandela in this way Londoners today can make clear their commitment to uproot every form of racism from this planet.'

The London Community Gospel Choir will be attending the service.