A pilgrimage to Mandela House in Soweto

Her shed beside the Hector Pieterson Museum boasted of artefacts that depicted the rich South African culture, some of which are sold at forbidden prices at the Oliver Tambo International Airport’s so-called duty-free shops. Apart from the wares in the woman’s open shop, the other unforgettable image at the Hector Pieterson Museum is the giant […]

Her shed beside the Hector Pieterson Museum boasted of artefacts that depicted the rich South African culture, some of which are sold at forbidden prices at the Oliver Tambo International Airport’s so-called duty-free shops. Apart from the wares in the woman’s open shop, the other unforgettable image at the Hector Pieterson Museum is the giant size marble slab that held the image of a young man carrying a dying boy in his arm, with a school girl by his side, as they raced away from the danger of death.
Apart from her decaying teeth and gum that exposed her transition to the second half of her age, the woman’s thick, near-yellow skin colour distinguished her as a black South African. Mozanaka approached me with her hopes of earning some Rand glaring in her eyes as I sought an explanation to the image I saw and the significance of the museum to the people of Soweto. My own impression of Soweto emerged from Oswald Mbuyisemi Mtshali’s poem entitled “Nightfall in Soweto,” which I memorised as a student of literature. Some of the lines that have endured in my memory say:
Nightfall comes like
a dreaded disease
seeping through the pores
of a healthy body
and ravaging it beyond repair
A murderer’s hand,
lurking in the shadows,
clasping the dagger,
strikes down the helpless victim.
I am the victim.
I am slaughtered
every night in the streets.
I am cornered by the fear
gnawing at my timid heart;
in my helplessness I languish.
Man has ceased to be man
Man has become beast
Man has become prey.
I am the prey;
I am the quarry to be run down
by the marauding beast
let loose by cruel nightfall
from his cage of death.
Where is my refuge?
Where am I safe?
Not in my matchbox house
Where I barricade myself against nightfall.
I tremble at his crunching footsteps,
I quake at his deafening knock at the door.
“Open up!” he barks like a rabid dog
thirsty for my blood.
Nightfall! Nightfall!
You are my mortal enemy.
But why were you ever created?
Why can’t it be daytime?
Daytime forever more?
Since I had to memorise this poem to pass my examination in Literary Criticism, most of the verses that captured the danger and lurking death on the streets of Soweto had lived with me. With this opportunity to step my feet on Soweto, I longed to know and understand the town and its contrasts. Then, there I was at a museum that symbolised the struggle captured in Mtshali’s poem.
Neither tall nor diminutive, the aging woman approached me with the skilful flattery of a salesperson. “My son, your mother made all these things with her hands,” she began, picking varieties of the artefacts and emphasising their elegance as she persuaded me to patronise her. “This is what your mother lives on. They’re beautiful. Please, buy and take some to your country. Your children would love them.”
Though there was no meeting point between her priorities and mine, I was enchanted by her marketing skill. My objective of visiting Soweto was to have a feel of the historic township and Mandela House Museum, now considered one of the tourist attractions in South Africa. My taxi driver and guide, however, insisted that apart from Mandela House, one other historic place to visit in Soweto is the Hector Pieterson Museum which was created in memory of students killed in a 1976 students uprising in Soweto.
The museum was the scene of the killing of hundreds of students in 1976. They had protested against the imposition of the Bantu Education system which, among its curricula, included the use of Afrikaans language as the medium of instruction in all African schools. In their hundreds the students, under the aegis of the South African Students Movement (SASM), marched to what was called the West Orlando Stadium, brandishing slogans like ‘Away with Afrikaans,’ ‘Amandla Awehtu’ (Power to the People), ‘Free Azania’ (Free South Africa) and they sang ‘Nkosi Sikele i Africa (God bless Africa). The apartheid police confronted the peaceful protest with violence, leading to the unforgettable massacre of hundreds of school children which took place in less than two kilometres from the residence of the hero of South Africa’s liberation, Nelson Mandela.
Mozanaka was 27-year-old and married when the massacre took place. Her first son was 8-year-old and she had another three-month old baby. Asked what she felt about the protest and the tragedy that accompanied it, the woman’s mood changed from being vivacious to languid.
“I hate Afrikaans,” she said in disdain for the language of white South Africans. “I hate it. I no longer speak the language. But after the struggle, we gained everything we ever desired. In Soweto, we now have water, electricity and good roads. We are equal with the white man. We can go to the same toilet as the white man. In the past, we couldn’t sit in the same train with the white man in the train. Now, we enter the same train. It is great living to see these days.”
In this brief encounter, the woman told the story of the transformation of Soweto from a despised ghetto to a township of note. The original name of the town was Masakeng. It was changed to South-West Township, Soweto, an acronym that is easier to pronounce than Masakeng.
Created under the apartheid regime’s policy of segregation, Soweto was the residential place of black South Africans who worked in the mines.  However, most of the mines around Soweto are now empty of gold and other precious stones that attracted the white man. Soweto assumed a political status as the community from where the fight for freedom in South Africa was launched.
As we drove from one part of the township to another, the transformation that made this woman to smile with satisfaction, in spite of her poverty, was not lost on me. The streets of Soweto are tarred with asphalt and unmistakably clean. There was neither dust nor dirt in sight. Unlike many townships in Nigeria, the drainages are covered, so that the refuse that flow through them do not injure the sensibility of those who use the roads. The township is well-planned, without illegal structures and the kind of ambiguities that necessitate demolitions and outcries in Abuja, Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory. There is constant water and electricity supply.
The old shanties built with corrugated iron sheets have been converted to modest modern structures. As a sign that it has come of age, the township, with a population of about 1.6 million, has a television station that covers its political, social and economic activities. There is also a newspaper by the name The Sowetan, which is also very popular in Johannesburg, Pretoria and other cities in South Africa.  Supermarkets, football fields, schools, standard hospitals, and parks are found all over the township. Most importantly, Soweto is home to the country’s foremost icon and the late South African President Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, boxing legend Baby Jake Matlala, musician Yvonne Chaka Chaka, the late Dr Nthato Motlana, and journalist Aggrey Klaaste.
We spent about thirty minutes at Hector Pieterson Museum, before driving to the famous Mandela House, just down the road. As the driver turned into a parking space adjacent to Mandela House, I looked around to identify the house of the political icon. I failed. All the houses were built in the form of “matchboxes” which Mtshali described in his “Nightfall in South Africa.” The hundreds of houses are identical in what was described as postage stamp size plot on Number 8115 at the corner of Vilakazi and Ngakena streets in Orlando West, Soweto. I was made to understand that the home of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, called Tutu House, is also on the same street.
My guide pointed at a signboard in front of a building called Mandela House. He adjusted his car seat to a ‘sleeping position,’ and left me to go and explore the museum.  I walked across the road and approached the gate. The house was fenced round with iron, about six feet high. A middle aged woman at the entrance ushered me into the simple reception that was only an appendage to the wall from the next building. Another lady in a cubicle at the reception demanded for 60 Rand as fee before I could explore the house. I looked at the structure on the plot that is less than 50 square metres. Almost dismissing it for its size, my instinct was, ‘Why should I pay 60 Rand for as excursion into this small house?’ But I had come all the way to Soweto, I told myself. I should not despise the museum because of its size.
After making the payment, a young lady who sat close to the receptionist, as if she had no business with my visit, rose to her feet. “I am Nomuuyo Madakana,” she began. “I am a tourism student at the University of Johannesburg. I will take you through the tour of this building, which is the first house built by Nelson Mandela in 1945, as a family house.”
Nomuuyo’s officious approach came to me as a bit strange. It seemed she had memorised the story of this house and, like a kid recounting verses she had memorised from the Bible, the young lady told the story of events that happened over 70 years before she was born, with ease.
“Mandela stayed in this house for only 15 years,” she continued. “After his release from prison in 1990, he returned to the house and stayed for only 11 days. As a result of his popularity and the fact that he needed better security, he moved away from here and donated the building to Soweto Heritage Trust which has converted the house to a museum.”
I thought that was all to the building – such a short story. But Nomuuyo moved to a side of the wall and began to point at plates attached to it. It was at this point that I noticed that there were dozens of such plates on the wall. The first of them, to which Numuuyo pointed, was a date: 18th July, 1918.
“This is Mandela’s date of birth,” the tourism student shed light on the content of the plate. His name at birth was Rolihlaha, which means pulling down the branch of a tree. In Xhola, Mandela’s tribe, its transliteration would mean a trouble-maker. On his first day at school, Mandela’s teacher gave him another name – Nelson – because the teacher couldn’t pronounce Mandela’s native name. That’s how he became Nelson to date.”
According to the young lady, at the time Mandela built the house, the street was dusty. He worked as a security guard in Soweto, but later studied Law at the University of Witwatersrand by correspondence in order to become a lawyer.
I had thought that Winnie Mandela was the late South African President’s first wife. But another plate on the wall with the inscription “Evelyn” proved me wrong. Mandela’s first wife was Evelyn, a Jehovah Witness, who decided to quit the marriage as a result of police harassment. “Every time she returned from church meetings or market or some other visits, she would meet arms wielding policemen laying siege on the house in order to arrest Mandela. One day, she made up her mind to call it quit. She filed for divorce, and in 1956 they parted ways. In 1957, Mandela met Winnie and they got married in 1958.”
Various epochs in Mandela’s life were captured on the walls of the house which was once raided by the apartheid police and at other times set ablaze in controversial circumstances. Some parts of the wall still have bullet holes and marks of scorches from attacks by Apartheid security forces or their agents. In the premises is a portion, a garden, with a tender tree and young flowers. I was made to understand that the late icon preserved that space for the burial of the umbilical cords of his children and grandchildren, in accordance with Xloha culture. When Mandela donated the house to the Trust, the agency rebuilt it, though it retained the building and premises’ original structures.
The main building in the compound is a two-bedroom apartment with a passage that serves as a living room and another small room for visitors. In the living room, the original furniture used by the late Mandela and Winnie have been preserved. They included beds, tables, chairs, cooking utensils and domestic implements. Then, on the walls are photographs that told Mandela’s story as a boxer. His boxing belt, plaques of various awards, various foreign currencies, camera, boots, award certificates, historic and commendation letters, and reports about Mandela’s reputable exploits, occupy spaces on the walls, desks and shelves in the building.
One of the letters in a case in the room was written by Winnie Mandela to Nelson Mandela, and dated 1st November 1976. It said,
“I wrote to the children just after your detention consoling them not to be worried about your absence from home. I also reminded them that you are experienced in facing difficulties at the same time wishing them good luck and success in the examinations. Although encouraging them, I am always concerned about your health, spending sleepless nights thinking about the children who are left alone, the damage of property in the house, thinking of friends and the loss of such a good paying job, the loss of money paid for examinations and the anxiety of not knowing when we shall meet again. The girls told me that they visited you several times and that you seemed to be in good health. Such messages give one courage…”
It was difficult to decipher the context of this letter, but one could guess the mood of this family, separated in three-fold as Mandela and Winnie enlisted in the struggle for the freedom of the black South African.
Among many other certificates, handwritten letters and notes of Mandela preserved in the house was another significant one with the title, Nelson Mandela Honorary Citizen of Toronto which bore the seal of Canada. Then, there is the smiling face of Nelson Mandela with numerous drawings of the heart, and in various ways, people saying they loved him.
Before I could complete the tour on the house, I noticed a crowd. Tourists of different races – the Chinese, Indians, Europeans, school children, old men and women. They had assembled in the premises and moved from one end to another.
As I departed from the museum I learnt a lesson: Mandela was human. He was not born in an extraordinary manner; his early days were not different from those of children born in his generation; he didn’t enjoy any form of preferential treatment. He chose pains against pleasure. He was not afraid of death. He ruled over himself and became a hero, not only in South Africa, but in the world. At the announcement of his death last Thursday, one verse in the Bible that depicts his life rang a bell in my head. It is a verse from a letter written by Apostle Paul to Timothy in 2 Timoth 4:7. It says, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.”
On his part, Mandela has fought a good fight and finished his course. He has kept faith. The ball is now in the court of current African leaders to whom Mandela’s life should remain a positive challenge.
Adieu, Madiba.