At home with the Mandelas
It was something of a revelation driving through the township. And an eerie feeling wandering through the house itself. It was May 2000 when I found myself in Soweto, a place that had acquired a certain newsworthy status over the preceding decades, during the apartheid struggle, the coming to prominence of Archbishop Desmond Tutu who lived there and, of course, the release from prison and subsequent ascension to the presidency by Nelson Mandela. And also as the ‘headquarters’ of Winnie Mandela, the divisive former wife of Nelson Mandela who died last week.
From back in my schooldays I’d always wanted to see the famous township, the place where the uprising, led by schoolchildren in the summer of 1976, had resulted in the death of the young boy Hector Pieterson. It was the photograph by Sam Nzima of the body of the 13-year-old boy being carried from the scene that came to symbolise the uprising. He wasn’t the only one, of course, to die that day when the police opened fire – almost 180 lost their lives and hundreds more were injured.
I’d been in Cape Town before heading to Johannesburg and Soweto. The highlight of Cape Town for me had been my visit to Robben Island, the exposed ‘rock’, about half an hour by boat from the Cape Town waterfront, and the place that was ‘home’ to Nelson Mandela for 18 years of the 27 he spent behind bars.
I can still see his cell in my mind’s eye simply because it was just so unbelievable that he had spent all that time in such a tiny, enclosed space. Mandela was a tall man – over 6ft – and the cell itself was only a few inches longer than that. To imagine him lying there, his head against one wall and his toes almost able to touch the other, was an excruciating image.
With the Robben Island tour conducted by former political prisoners it gave a particular insight into the place. And as we toured the island in a little minibus, stopping off at the limestone quarry where the prisoners had endured back-breaking work, day in and day out, it was interesting to notice just how our guide talked about the prisoners. All of them – some household names – were referred to by their Christian names. All but one. Every time the guide mentioned the island’s most famous prisoner, he always referred to him as ‘Mr Mandela’.
But while Robben Island was one experience that I wouldn’t have missed, Soweto was another one.
I don’t quite know what I had imagined, but the reality of the Soweto township was certainly not what I was expecting.
For a start it is vast. It’s currently just under 80 square miles in size and has a population of 1.25million. Even when I visited, Soweto occupied around 42 square miles and the population was heading towards the one million mark. But what really surprised me, apart from its scale, was the different standards of housing there and the way they were cheek by jowl with each other.
So as you drove through the township you could pull up on a street and, looking to your left, you’d see really poor accommodation, shacks, really, housing really large families. Out on the pavement I witnessed teenage boys with a stall set up, selling live, squawking chickens. Look to your right, across the road, however, and there were large detached houses, many of them gated.
After driving around for a while, getting a feel for the place – the poverty, the relative affluence, the slightly edgy feel – we pulled up at a detached house. The Mandela home. Oh, it wasn’t still a home, of course. Winnie and Nelson Mandela had been divorced for some years and Mandela had recently stepped down as President. But this had been their home (and the home of Mandela and his first wife, Evelyn) and was the house that Nelson Mandela returned to with Winnie straight after his release in 1990.
I have read reports this past week, in the wake of the death of Winnie Mandela, about the palatial nature of the Mandela home in Soweto, but the house I visited wasn’t palatial. It was certainly a detached house, low-rise and red-brick, and, I think, if I am remembering correctly, with a high gate for added security. But it was relatively small. It wasn’t particularly attractive, either, and it certainly didn’t reek of affluence – not compared to some of the other houses I saw that day in the Soweto township. Archbishop Tutu’s, for example, I recall being much grander.
By the time I visited, the Mandela house was a museum, albeit a rather ramshackle one, to be honest. It has since been properly established as a museum but back then there were just a few stalls in the forecourt where you could buy some bits and pieces. I bought a small African mask that still hangs on the wall of my living room at home.
The best thing was just being able to wander through the rooms, still with all the atmosphere of a real home (I remember a colourful knitted patchwork quilt on the double bed) and knowing that you were literally walking in the footsteps of Mandela.
With the death of Winnie, Soweto is now mourning its lost sister. But really, when you visit the Mandela home there, it’s not about her at all. It is – and always was – all about her inspirational former husband.