Johannesburg — "We have the most famous street in the world," says Thulani Mphela, our guide. "This is the only street in the world with two Nobel Prize winners. No other street in the world does; not in Asia, Europe, South America, North America and Oceania."
He is talking about Vilakazi street in Johannesburg's famous township of Soweto. Nobel laureates Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu lived there as well as anti-apartheid icon and former South Africa's president Nelson Mandela.
The two became renowned for their struggles in the liberation of South Africa, and their contributions to the country's freedom today are etched in eternity.
Last week, I made my latest round of trips to Nelson Mandela's former house, now called the Nelson Mandela National Museum, and the experience was still sobering.
Despite the previous visits, there is always something new I get to learn every time I go to the small house Madiba lived in between 1946 and 1962. You simply cannot get tired of the history of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela and his former wife Winnie Nomzamo Madikizela Mandela.
Modifications have been made from the single-story red-brick matchbox house built in 1945 to the present structure for tourists, because the original was burnt down in the 1970s at the height of the clashes with the apartheid government.
However, it was rebuilt by the Soweto Heritage Trust to make it as similar as possible to the tiny home that Mandela lived in with his first wife Evelyn Ntoko Mase.
Queues at the entrance to Nelson Mandela House are a given. The house receives 700 to 1,000 visitors every day from all over the world. It is located at No. 8115 at the corner of Vilakazi and Ngakane streets. Locals are cognizant of the opportunities that abound, and there is a lot of arts and crafts sold across the street and in the areas adjacent.
Entrance into the museum depends on where one comes from; a few friends and I were charged the rate for members of the African Union.
The inside of the house has bullet holes and scorch marks from attacks of the government in the horrible days of repression and discrimination. There are original furnishings and memorabilia including photographs, citations handed to Mandela, and the world championship belt he received from legendary boxer Sugar Ray Leonard.
Mandela was an avid boxer and a fan of the sweet science. There are the very shoes worn by Winnie and Nelson, photos of his first wife Evelyn, pictures and videos of their children Zenani and Zindzi, a recreation of his bed, and life-size frames of the two freedom fighters with inscriptions of some of their most famous statements in their struggles.
While in incarceration at Robben Island, Mandela was allowed to meet a visitor for only 30 minutes every year. Winnie would board a bus from Johannesburg to Cape Town before taking a ferry to Robben Island. All, to see her husband for half an hour. It was both physical and psychological torture aimed at breaking the spirit of the those inside and outside the towering prison walls.
In fact, at first Mandela was only allowed to exchange letters with his family, and these letters were read and censored by prison officials. Any writing of a political nature was forbidden. Later, he could only send or receive 500-word letters every six months.
These are stories that are told and retold on the tour of the house that also has markings of the wall that had been built by Winnie to shield her from incessant attacks orchestrated by the government.
Police persecution of Winnie and her family was unrelenting when Mandela was at Robben Island. There is a famous image at the museum of her being brutally arrested by the regime on Vilakazi street outside her home.
The apartheid regime had clearly recognised her political involvement and strong popular support and she became a target in her own right. The image was taken in 1972 when the police kicked down the front door of house 8115, hurled bricks through the window, fired shots at the house and its occupants in what was the first of many such incidents over the ensuing years.
Another image prominently hanging in the museum is of Mandela burning his pass book in the yard outside House 8115, Orlando West, during the nationwide defence campaign and stay-at-home in March 1960. In reaction to that campaign, the government later declared a state of emergency and arrested thousands of activists including Mandela.
In Mandela's book Long Walk to Freedom, he highlights what his house meant to him, particularly after he became a free man "That night, I returned with Winnie to No. 8115 in Orlando West. It was only then that I knew in my heart that I had left prison. For me, No. 8115 was the centre point of my world, the place marked with an X in my mental geography."
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When Mandela was released from prison in February 1990, he lived in the house for only eleven days. As president of South Africa, his private residence was the Mandela House in Houghton where he lived until his death in December 2013.
Winnie, who divorced Madiba in 1996 and remained a polarising figure in South African politics, never left Soweto. She acquired a mansion in Soweto where she lived until her death in April 2018.
Not far away from the historic House No. 8115 is the Hector Pieterson museum, whose sad story is related in every sense with the Nelson Mandela museum. Indeed, the common routine for tourists is to be taken to House No. 8115 before taking the short ride, which is also walkable, to the Hector Pieterson museum.
Nelson Mandela museum tells the story of South Africa's struggles in just a visit that lasts one hour. It captures the life and times of Nelson Mandela, his first wife Evelyn, his second wife Winnie and the extent of the violence that transpired during the protracted fight for freedom in South Africa.
