In the Footsteps of Mandela

When Nelson Mandela, Africa’s greatest statesman, celebrated his ninetieth birthday on July 18, the world celebrated with him. The long life of South Africa’s most famous son is also celebrated in a number of museums that attract tens of thousands of tourists.

Robben Island

The best-known, and also one of the most scenic, is Robben Island, a five kilometre square rock in Table Bay that is reached by the ferries that criss-cross the seven kilometres of ocean separating it from Cape Town. Former prisoners give guided tours and first-hand accounts of the experiences of opponents of apartheid. View the cell where Mandela, prisoner 46664, spent much of those thirteen years and the quarry where he and other prisoners undertook hard labour.

Victor Verster Prison and the ‘Gilded Cage’

With anti-apartheid protests verging on civil war and international clamour for his release, Mandela was moved to Cape Town’s grim Pollsmoor Prison and then to more luxurious accommodation at Victor Verster Prison (now renamed Groot Drakenstein Prison) in the Cape Winelands, an hour’s drive from the city. Mandela called the comfortable quarters his ‘gilded cage’. Despite its facilities (including a gym and swimming pool) the walls were topped with razor wire and armed guards-ever present. From here he was released in 1990. Preserved as it was when Mandela was in residence, it is now a national heritage site and museum.

The Mandela National Museum, Eastern Cape

The Mandela Museum is spread across three sites. Mvezo is a rural village by the Mbhashe River, where Mandela was born. Qunu, where he grew up, is a village that is also home to the Nelson Mandela Youth and Heritage Centre. In the region’s capital, Umtata, is the Bhunga Building (formerly the Transkei Parliament premises), with permanent exhibitions dedicated to Mandela’s life and achievements.

Liliesleaf Farm, Rivonia

Also a museum is the farm near Johannesburg that was for a time a centre of ANC resistance and a meeting place for leaders including Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and other activists and intellectuals. Police raided it in July 1963, arresting activists who were later charged and tried in the Rivonia Treason Trial. That trial marked the beginning of Mandela’s twenty-seven years imprisonment, before becoming South Africa’s first black president in 1994.

Mandela Family Museum, Soweto

The home where Mandela lived with his first wife, Evelyn, is located in Orlando West, in Soweto (a contraction of ‘South West Township’). The tiny, four-roomed house, is now in the hands of the Soweto Heritage Trust, and is filled with assorted Mandela memorabilia. Though still under development, a Soweto visit (township trips are best conducted via a reputable tour operator) will give tourists a powerful flavour of the apartheid era.

For a perspective on apartheid in general, the Apartheid Museum, five kilometres south of Johannesburg’s city centre, is a ‘state of the art’ facility remembering the suffering and celebrating the demise of formalised racial oppression in South Africa. Of course, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was but one of many thousands of South Africans who dedicated their lives to ending that brutal regime but he, above all, symbolises that struggle. By following in Mandela’s footsteps, tourists can pay tribute to his courage and that of many others, many of whom did not survive.

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