Mandela house scores big with tourists

By Omulo Okoth

As teams fight it out in the South Africa’s magnificent stadia, delegations are falling over one another in a small, but famous corner of the south western townships of Johannesburg.

The Mandela Museum on 8115 Vilakazi Street, Orlando West, in Soweto (the acronym of South Western Townships) is teeming with people from around the world. This house, at the corner of Vilakazi and Ngakane Streets, is where the anti-apartheid icon popularly known as Madiba, lived in between 1946 and 1962. It is only a few metres away from the house of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, giving the road the elevated status of being the only street in the world where two Nobel laureates live.

Mandela donated the house to Soweto Heritage Trust, of which he is the founder and patron, on September 1, 1997 to run it as a museum.

It is here where he lived with his wife Winnie Madikizela — now divorced — before he was jailed for two years and later for life.

This is where the Mandelas got their daughters Zindzi and Zenani at the height of the erstwhile oppressive Apartheid regime.

Derogatory term

The house is a single storey red-brick, the type referred to here as ‘matchbox’, built in 1945. The houses in Soweto were built in the shape of matchbox, a derogatory term that stuck to-date.

It has bullet holes in the walls and the facade has scorch marks from attacks with Molotov cocktails. The inside hosts some original furnishings, artifacts and memorabilia including photographs, citations given to Nelson Mandela and the world boxing championship belt given to Mandela by Sugar Ray Leonard.

A young girl, who was probably not born when the world’s longest held prisoner lived in this house, takes tourists through the Mandela House, showing various items that belonged to him and explaining the facts and stories behind each.

She has so well memorised the detail of what she is to tell tourists that it sounds more or less like a song to her.

To the amusement, nay bemusement, of visitors, she finishes her explanation with the words: "So babas and mamas, if there are no questions, the house is now yours."

Original shape

There is a huge box, in which the family used to keep their clothes, but which is now used to collect money for charity.

A huge sideboard contains plaques and portraits of the Mandelas, including pictures taken shortly before he was arrested and jailed.

Tourists have thronged the Museum since the World Cup started on June 11 and officials here say upto 5,000 people have been visiting daily. While pictures can be taken, no filming is allowed inside. Television crews are asked to pay Rand 10,000 (Sh100,000) to film. There are two plasma television sets mainly showing films of Mandelas recalling those difficult days.

"We would go to sleep knowing the door would be knocked and sharp spotlights would be trained on us in the middle of the night," Winnie is recorded as saying.

Tourists pose for pictures inside the house where the Mandela statue stands at a corner, or beside the sideboard where there are pictures of other freedom icons like Thabo Mbeki, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, Steve Biko, among others.