Tour of Soweto, Part I: The Nelson Mandela House

 

 

I had heard the term Soweto before. I'm not sure where, but I knew it was a locational term that referred to an area in South Africa. I took a pass/fail course in college on African History, so maybe I heard the term in a Miami University lecture hall in 1989. I am embarrassed to say that I did not pass that course - the only time in my 16 years of education that I failed to do so. In my defense, learning the history of an entire continent is not easy. Africa is a large continent with much diversity. Hearing about the cultures, the wars, and the peoples of hundreds of African tribes with unpronouncible names is quite the challenge; trying to understand imperialism by the Dutch, British, and French is quite overwhelming.

Maybe I should have paid a little better attention in that history course, for it wasn't until I read a South Africa travel book prior to coming that Soweto defined a large area in southwest Johannesburg made up of dozens of neighborhoods where only black South Africans were permitted to live during the Apartheid era. And, where I thought that Soweto was an African word, maybe derived from the Xhosa or Zulu language, I came to find out it stood for South Western Townships. New York City has it's SOHO, San Francisco it's SOMA and Joburg has it's Soweto. But unlike SOHO and SOMA, Soweto has a turbulent history.

Originally, Soweto was established as a municipal housing settlement for workers who needed to be close to town. In his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela describes the Soweto house he and his first wife, Evelyn, moved into in 1946: "The house itself was identical to hundreds of others built on postage-stamp-size plots on dirt roads. It had the same standard tin roof, the same cement floor, a narrow kitchen, and a bucket toilet in back. Although there were steetlamps outside, we used kerosene lamps inside as the homes were not yet electrified. The bedroom was so small that a double bed took up almost the entire floor space....It was the very opposite of grand, but it was my first true home of my own and I was mightily proud. A man is not a man until he has a house of his own. I did not know then that it would be the only residence that would be entirely mine for many, many years."

I was lucky enough to step foot in this exact home that Nelson Mandela shared, first with Evenlyn, and then with his second wife, Winnie, during a personalized tour of a small portion of Soweto with Cheryl Pillay, executive director of Come Back Mission. Cheryl is a teacher by training and includes a Soweto tour with every volunteer who gives their time to Come Back Mission. She began the tour by driving down what was the one and only road leading into the townships where, by the 1970s, over 1 million blacks were forced to reside due to racial separation polocies of Apartheid. Really? One road for one million people? Ahh, but so much easier for the white-controlled government to shut down the road and keep people confined. Turning down a few recently paved side streets with lovely new brick sidewalks - the result of infrastructure development in preparation for an onslaught of tourists for the 2010 World Cup - we entered the Orlando West neighborhood to No. 8115 Orlando West Street: the Nelson Mandela house.

Located across from the Mandela Family Restaurant, a local favorite still owned by his ex-wife and activist, Winnie Mandela, No. 8115 is now a tourist destination with a modern structure built adjacent to the Mandela house where a small gift shop and ticket booth are located. I happily paid the entrance fee for me and my friend Corrien (she received a discount as she is South African) and eagerily listened as the student tour guide explained the history of South African racial segregation in the tiny courtyard. We followed her around to the front of the house where she pointed out that the tree planted on the corner was where the umbilical cords of Nelson's children are buried. Before entering the red brick house, we passed by an oversized black-and-white photo of a young Nelson Mandela standing on the porch of his home in March 1961, his dog hugging him as if he hadn't seen his owner in a long time. Instead, the dog chillingly knew that he wouldn't ever see his owner again for Nelson's trial for treason would either send him to prison or underground into hiding. It was the last time Nelson Mandela stood on the steps of No. 8115 Orlando West until his famous release from prison in 1990 after the end of Apartheid.

The interior of the home was indeed small - just three tiny rooms plus a shower room. While I could clearly see the size, imagine how cold the concrete floor would have been in winter and how loud the house must have been when a summer storm rained down on the tin roof, I could not picture Nelson raising his family here. The house was too cluttered with Mandela's honorary university degrees, awards and memorabilia. I would have preferred to see the house in the state that Winnie Mandela left it in. That withstanding, it was a privilege to stand in the former house of one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century. And I love the photo of me on the back stoop resting my hand on the same spigot that Winnie Mandela is using in the black-and-white photo adjacent to me.