The former South African president always returned to the modest village where he grew up.
The village of Qunu, where Nelson Mandela spent his childhood.
Photograph: Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images
Emma Brockes and David Smith in Qunu
Nature was our playground," wrote Nelson Mandela
in his memoir, Long Walk to Freedom. "The hills above Qunu were dotted
with large smooth rocks which we transformed into our own rollercoaster.
We sat on flat stones and slid down the face of the rocks. We did this
until our backsides were so sore we could hardly sit down."
Mandela's "sliding stone" is still visible today, a big granite boulder with a track worn smooth and shiny by his childhood sport nearly a century ago. It is one of the rocky outcrops overlooking the bucolic valley of Qunu, the place where he grew up and always returned.
"Some of the happiest years of my boyhood were spent in Qunu," Mandela wrote. The old men and women of Qunu smile to remember, remembering themselves.
If Mandela's death inspires pilgrims, it is to this modest village in Eastern Cape province, where chickens scarper at the sound of a car and maize grows ad hoc in the yards, that they will come. It is hard to look at the green hills of the former Transkei, designated during the apartheid era as an "independent homeland" and as such a great source of political unrest, and not find in them some sympathy of scale with the man who emerged from them.
Mandela was born in the nearby village of Mvezo, schooled in neighbouring Mqekezweni and made his name in Johannesburg. But it was Qunu he called home, both as a child and after his release from prison when he returned to build a house. It was here that he retired to spend his twilight years, preferring the tug of the ancestors to the brash metropolis.
The remoteness and poverty of the region have ensured that Qunu is almost as quiet as it was in the 1920s when Mandela was a herd boy, looking after sheep and calves in the fields. There is a museum dedicated to him, one of three in the area, but this is no Graceland.
Modernity is still a relative stranger here. The huts Mandela knew in his childhood, with their beehive-shaped structures of mud walls and their floors made of crushed ant-heap, have given way to matchbox brick houses that dot the undulating landscape. There are still rondavels with thatched roofs, but now rondavels with iron roofs too. Small farms are ringed by wire fences, containing maize crops and livestock pens fashioned from corrugated sheets and crooked branches. At dusk, the gloom is pierced by open fires.
"A humble man" is how the custodians of Qunu choose to remember Mandela, resisting the urge to eke posthumous glory from his boyhood antics. It was a long time ago. But even during the early years, there were incidents that distinguished him from his peers. Mandela was the only boy in the village who learned to speak English.
One day, a white man on a motorbike broke down while passing through Qunu. A group of raggedly dressed children crowded round to watch him, out of which Mandela stepped forward and asked, in English, if he could help. Surprised, the man asked his name. "Nelson," he said, offering the English name he had been given at school, rather than his Xhosa name Rolihlahla, meaning "one who brings trouble on himself", and proceeded to help the man fix his motorbike. The man gave him three pennies. As the villagers tell it, Mandela gave one to each of his sisters and kept the third for his school fees.
His school friends are gone now, but Victoria Msiwa, an octogenarian, said it was her grandfather who founded the school that Mandela attended. Like most rural South African boys, he learned the art of stick fighting. Msiwa said: "He took the sticks to school, but they were not allowed there, so all the boys had to leave the sticks on the other side of the school.
"If he was defeated in a stick fight, he would go back and fight the next day. He was a fighter. He liked fighting and he did not want to be defeated by anybody."
Unusually, Msiwa's mother owned an organ. She recalled: "Nelson came to play the organ at my home. He was a school pupil at the time. It was a game. These were the things that used to entertain us in the rural areas."
After his release from jail in 1990, Mandela returned to Qunu, catching up on gossip about old acquaintances, some of whom were no longer alive. Msiwa, a great-grandmother wearing a woolly hat and apron, said: "He was friendly when he came out of prison, visiting us all. But when he became president, that made him another prisoner. People were not allowed to talk to him. He was cut off from us by the government."
The house that Mandela built when he gained his freedom is conspicuous beside a national motorway; a peach-coloured mansion with tiled roof behind guardhouse, multiple security walls and satellite dishes. Cars speed by the famous property but so too do cows and sheep at a gentler pace. When Mandela was in residence, the South African flag and police flag flew at full mast.
Nelson Mandela's house, in the village of Qunu, where the former
South African president returned for his retirement.
Mandela's "sliding stone" is still visible today, a big granite boulder with a track worn smooth and shiny by his childhood sport nearly a century ago. It is one of the rocky outcrops overlooking the bucolic valley of Qunu, the place where he grew up and always returned.
"Some of the happiest years of my boyhood were spent in Qunu," Mandela wrote. The old men and women of Qunu smile to remember, remembering themselves.
If Mandela's death inspires pilgrims, it is to this modest village in Eastern Cape province, where chickens scarper at the sound of a car and maize grows ad hoc in the yards, that they will come. It is hard to look at the green hills of the former Transkei, designated during the apartheid era as an "independent homeland" and as such a great source of political unrest, and not find in them some sympathy of scale with the man who emerged from them.
Mandela was born in the nearby village of Mvezo, schooled in neighbouring Mqekezweni and made his name in Johannesburg. But it was Qunu he called home, both as a child and after his release from prison when he returned to build a house. It was here that he retired to spend his twilight years, preferring the tug of the ancestors to the brash metropolis.
The remoteness and poverty of the region have ensured that Qunu is almost as quiet as it was in the 1920s when Mandela was a herd boy, looking after sheep and calves in the fields. There is a museum dedicated to him, one of three in the area, but this is no Graceland.
Modernity is still a relative stranger here. The huts Mandela knew in his childhood, with their beehive-shaped structures of mud walls and their floors made of crushed ant-heap, have given way to matchbox brick houses that dot the undulating landscape. There are still rondavels with thatched roofs, but now rondavels with iron roofs too. Small farms are ringed by wire fences, containing maize crops and livestock pens fashioned from corrugated sheets and crooked branches. At dusk, the gloom is pierced by open fires.
"A humble man" is how the custodians of Qunu choose to remember Mandela, resisting the urge to eke posthumous glory from his boyhood antics. It was a long time ago. But even during the early years, there were incidents that distinguished him from his peers. Mandela was the only boy in the village who learned to speak English.
One day, a white man on a motorbike broke down while passing through Qunu. A group of raggedly dressed children crowded round to watch him, out of which Mandela stepped forward and asked, in English, if he could help. Surprised, the man asked his name. "Nelson," he said, offering the English name he had been given at school, rather than his Xhosa name Rolihlahla, meaning "one who brings trouble on himself", and proceeded to help the man fix his motorbike. The man gave him three pennies. As the villagers tell it, Mandela gave one to each of his sisters and kept the third for his school fees.
His school friends are gone now, but Victoria Msiwa, an octogenarian, said it was her grandfather who founded the school that Mandela attended. Like most rural South African boys, he learned the art of stick fighting. Msiwa said: "He took the sticks to school, but they were not allowed there, so all the boys had to leave the sticks on the other side of the school.
"If he was defeated in a stick fight, he would go back and fight the next day. He was a fighter. He liked fighting and he did not want to be defeated by anybody."
Unusually, Msiwa's mother owned an organ. She recalled: "Nelson came to play the organ at my home. He was a school pupil at the time. It was a game. These were the things that used to entertain us in the rural areas."
After his release from jail in 1990, Mandela returned to Qunu, catching up on gossip about old acquaintances, some of whom were no longer alive. Msiwa, a great-grandmother wearing a woolly hat and apron, said: "He was friendly when he came out of prison, visiting us all. But when he became president, that made him another prisoner. People were not allowed to talk to him. He was cut off from us by the government."
The house that Mandela built when he gained his freedom is conspicuous beside a national motorway; a peach-coloured mansion with tiled roof behind guardhouse, multiple security walls and satellite dishes. Cars speed by the famous property but so too do cows and sheep at a gentler pace. When Mandela was in residence, the South African flag and police flag flew at full mast.
Nelson Mandela's house, in the village of Qunu, where the former
South African president returned for his retirement.
Photograph: Rodger
Bosch/AFP/Getty Images
His nearest neighbour lives across the road, behind a modest hut that serves as a spaza
(convenience) shop and post office. Nokwanele Balizulu, the
"chieftainess" of Qunu, said Mandela stopped to wave to her every time
he came home. "Here in Qunu," she said, "he didn't wear a suit. He wore a
big shirt and walked around without bodyguards. Here he was home. He
loved this place."
What stories do people in the village tell about him? "There is one," Balizulu said. "When Madiba [Mandela's clan name] was a young boy, he was given his first pair of proper shoes to wear. But they were too large for him. He was so proud of them – he was a proud boy – but when he wore them through the village, all the girls laughed at him."
Close by, in a small house where flies swarm in the afternoon heat, are a couple in their 80s, Manquma and Noluzile Gamakhulu, who knew Mandela all their lives. Even as a young man, they recalled, his homecomings were a big event in the village: he would arrive in a black car and hand out apples and oranges. Noluzile, wearing a checked red dress and speaking through a Xhosa interpreter, said: "If he was giving out money, he gave everyone the same amount. He would go to the bigger children and tell them they must sing, 'South Africa is going to be free'."
The Gamakhulus lived next door to Mandela's mother, Noqaphi Nosekeni, until her death in 1968.
"His mother went to see him in prison," Noluzile said: "She'd come back and be very annoyed because they gave her very little time to be with her son. She died because she was very depressed. She got sick and there were no cows and no sheep.
"We had to get donkeys and load her on a sledge to be pulled up to the shop, where the doctors could regularly visit. This doctor said: 'This lady is very depressed, what is the thing worrying her so much?' After we came from the doctor at five o'clock, the old lady passed on.
"Everyone said the son has to be informed, but those in authority totally refused to allow him to come. The people in the village donated livestock, food and money so the old lady could be buried even though her son wasn't there."
The standard of living in Qunu and neighbouring villages is still desperately poor. But for Noluzile, Mandela was a generous spirit who built houses with access to electricity and water, renovated a clinic and schools and helped pay for the mourning to bury their dead. "He was very kind. He was a gift."
Along a bumpy dirt track is another brick house bequeathed by Mandela. Inside is a picture of the former president with raised fist and an image of an unknown boy with the slogan: "I have a dream." It is the home of Morris Mandela, a cousin.
"I remember Madiba well as a boy," he said. "He used to come and visit the homestead on his way home from school. I was looking after cattle as a herd boy. We would eat together: samp (dried corn kernels) and beans. I saw him as someone humble. To the present day we see him as someone humble."
Morris Mandela died last year.
What stories do people in the village tell about him? "There is one," Balizulu said. "When Madiba [Mandela's clan name] was a young boy, he was given his first pair of proper shoes to wear. But they were too large for him. He was so proud of them – he was a proud boy – but when he wore them through the village, all the girls laughed at him."
Close by, in a small house where flies swarm in the afternoon heat, are a couple in their 80s, Manquma and Noluzile Gamakhulu, who knew Mandela all their lives. Even as a young man, they recalled, his homecomings were a big event in the village: he would arrive in a black car and hand out apples and oranges. Noluzile, wearing a checked red dress and speaking through a Xhosa interpreter, said: "If he was giving out money, he gave everyone the same amount. He would go to the bigger children and tell them they must sing, 'South Africa is going to be free'."
The Gamakhulus lived next door to Mandela's mother, Noqaphi Nosekeni, until her death in 1968.
"His mother went to see him in prison," Noluzile said: "She'd come back and be very annoyed because they gave her very little time to be with her son. She died because she was very depressed. She got sick and there were no cows and no sheep.
"We had to get donkeys and load her on a sledge to be pulled up to the shop, where the doctors could regularly visit. This doctor said: 'This lady is very depressed, what is the thing worrying her so much?' After we came from the doctor at five o'clock, the old lady passed on.
"Everyone said the son has to be informed, but those in authority totally refused to allow him to come. The people in the village donated livestock, food and money so the old lady could be buried even though her son wasn't there."
The standard of living in Qunu and neighbouring villages is still desperately poor. But for Noluzile, Mandela was a generous spirit who built houses with access to electricity and water, renovated a clinic and schools and helped pay for the mourning to bury their dead. "He was very kind. He was a gift."
Along a bumpy dirt track is another brick house bequeathed by Mandela. Inside is a picture of the former president with raised fist and an image of an unknown boy with the slogan: "I have a dream." It is the home of Morris Mandela, a cousin.
"I remember Madiba well as a boy," he said. "He used to come and visit the homestead on his way home from school. I was looking after cattle as a herd boy. We would eat together: samp (dried corn kernels) and beans. I saw him as someone humble. To the present day we see him as someone humble."
Morris Mandela died last year.
Nelson Mandela's cousin Morris, left, and his nephew Napilisi.
Photograph: Obed Zilwa/AP
A short walk away is an iron fence, bits of litter and a gate secured
by a rusty chain and padlock. A sign says: "Mandela graveyard.
Monuments designed, manufactured and erected by Transkei Tombstones,
Butterworth." Eighteen headstones poke out of the long grass. The air is
still and silent, at peace save for the crowing of a cock. The cemetery
looks out across the endless brown and green hills to the horizon.
"They say he was a good stick fighter," muses Theminkosi Ntshebe, head of a nearby village. "When he grew up, he played sticks so well but he didn't want to hit anyone on the head because 'if I hit you on the head, you will die.'"
Ntshebe added: "Nelson Mandela will be remembered by what he has done for his people: he emancipated them. I've never seen God but I take it Mandela is the god you can see with your eyes."
"They say he was a good stick fighter," muses Theminkosi Ntshebe, head of a nearby village. "When he grew up, he played sticks so well but he didn't want to hit anyone on the head because 'if I hit you on the head, you will die.'"
Ntshebe added: "Nelson Mandela will be remembered by what he has done for his people: he emancipated them. I've never seen God but I take it Mandela is the god you can see with your eyes."
