Mandela home that tells story of long walk to freedom

By Patrick Mathangani

The umbilical cords of all of Nelson Mandela’s grandchildren are buried beneath a tree outside his old house in Soweto.

It is the Xhosa’s way of ensuring future generations connect with ancestors, believed to go into the soil when they leave relatives at burial. The tree known as Mellaluki stands about ten metres from the house.

As the nation waits for news on the ailing icon’s health, the house where Mandela lived from 1945 to 1961 stands as a testimony of his long journey battling apartheid, to his incarceration and release, and his current battle with poor health.

When he finally breathes his last, which the nation has come to accept as inevitable, a link will remain between him and his grandchildren.

Few want to let him go, and the age-old belief is that he will somewhat live among his family even when he is gone.

Arbitrary arrests

The house, located on a busy tourist area and a well-to-do part of the Soweto township, carries within its walls a rich history of struggle and resilience.

 It was here that Nelson Mandela brought his first wife, Evelyn Mase, and his second wife Winnie after separation with Mase.

Its red brick walls have witnessed violence, arbitrary police arrests, gunfights, teargas, frightened school children, and a broken marriage. It is a testament to both Mandela’s and the country’s struggle for the end of apartheid.

It’s a modest, two bedroom affair – quite a prize for a black person during the apartheid regime. The living room measures roughly four by nine metres, and faces a street branching off the main one. Many times, when he was sitting there with Evelyne or Winnie, police would storm in, firing fast rounds. But he survived.

The house is now hosts hordes of tourists each day eager to learn their lessons from one of the most beloved human being on the planet today.

Several bullet holes still preserved on the walls tell a story of the violence visited on freedom fighters and their families. The house was also petrol-bombed twice.

When Mandela built the house, there was no wall between the living room and the kitchen. But following many police raids in which they fired shots from the front door, he decided it was time to erect a wall to shield against the bullets.

The other bedrooms were for Mandela and his wives, and one for children.

Mandela’s daughter Zindzi remembers the knew no peace while growing up: “ You’d go to bed knowing that at some stage, there’s going to be this pounding on the doors, the windows, the bright lights, the torches…” her words are plastered out in Mandela’s bedroom.

Burnt by police

In 1970, police seized Winnie from this house and she was gone for 500 days.

It is modest. Curators have tried to preserve original items that Mandela used although his bed, mattress and bed sheets were burnt by police soon after his arrest.

In the kitchen stands a relic of one of South Africa’s darkest moments during the struggle against racist rule.

It is a rusty metallic cover of a waste bin used by students during the Soweto Uprising. On June 16, 1976, police opened fire on children protesting a government order that all subjects in school must be taught in Afrikaans, the language spoken by colonialists.

Up to 700 people, most of them children, were shot in the back as they fled. This is according to independent investigations, although the government put the number of the dead at less than 100.

The inhuman shootings of innocent children are immortolised in the movie Sarafina!

The incident happened not far from Mandela’s house, and helped to capture the attention of the international community about the brutality of apartheid. It marked a turning point in a world that had previously viewed events in South Africa with disinterest.

“In the 1976 uprising, it was a hive of activity. The consultations took place here. It was almost a game of tactics to outwit the enemy,” Mandela’s second wife, Winnie, said.

The house was a central point for planning and organising the movement.

But in 1961, he went underground, organising activities of ANC’s militant wing Umkhonto we Sizwe. His wife, Winnie, was often alone. But since he joined the resistance, Mandela’s wives had little time to see him. The children, too, resigned themselves to the harsh reality of an absentee father.

Mandela once wrote: “The wife of a freedom fighter is often like a widow, even when her husband is not in prison.”

In the bedroom also hangs a reminder of America’s shame in giving away Mandela to South Africa’s authorities in 1962.

Mandela was arrested at a police roadblock, put to trial between 1963 and 1964, and sentenced to a life in prison for sabotage. South African police had been tipped about his whereabouts by America’s CIA.

In 1990, eighteen members of Michigan’s legislature demanded that the United States apologises for the action. This letter now hangs in Mandela’s bedroom.

“Let it be known that the undersigned members of Michigan legislature implored the CIA to apologise for the alleged assistance to South African intelligence, which led to his arrest in 1962,” reads the letter.