Mandela House Museum

Former president Nelson Mandela’s tiny Soweto house, where his family lived from 1946 to the 1990s, is now an evocative museum.

This is the home Mandela returned to when he was freed from 27 years’ imprisonment in 1990, although he only spent 11 days there before moving into an official residence. He had last been in the house in 1962, the year he was arrested.

Mandela lived there with his first wife, Evelyn Mase, and then with his second wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who resided there from their 1958 marriage to her banishment to Brandfort in the then Orange Free State in 1977.

The four-roomed structure houses memorabilia, awards, honorary doctorates and family photographs. It also shows some scars from the apartheid years.

Vilakazi Street is a hive of tourist-friendly activity, with street traders, several restaurants serving traditional dishes, and urban art to enjoy. The street is the only one in the world to have been home to two Nobel Peace Prize recipients – Mandela and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, whose house stands on a corner diagonally opposite Mandela’s.