A plaque hangs near the front door of former South African president Nelson Mandela’s first township home in Alexandra in Johannesburg, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2013. Mandela moves to the house at Alexandra in 1941. South Africa is readying itself for the arrival of a flood of world leaders for the memorial service and funeral of Nelson Mandela as thousands of mourners continued to flock to sites around the country Saturday to pay homage to the freedom struggle icon. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
A plaque hangs near the front door of former South African president Nelson Mandela’s first township home in Alexandra in Johannesburg, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2013. Mandela moves to the house at Alexandra in 1941. South Africa is readying itself for the arrival of a flood of world leaders for the memorial service and funeral of Nelson Mandela as thousands of mourners continued to flock to sites around the country Saturday to pay homage to the freedom struggle icon. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
A plaque hangs near the front door of former South African president Nelson Mandela’s first township home in the township of Alexandra in Johannesburg, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2013. Mandela moved to the house in Alexandra in 1941. South Africa is readying itself for the arrival of a flood of world leaders for the memorial service and funeral of Nelson Mandela as thousands of mourners continued to flock to sites around the country Saturday to pay homage to the freedom struggle icon. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Children light candles in front of former president Nelson Mandela’s first township home in Alexandra in Johannesburg, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2013. Mandela moves to the house at Alexandra in 1941. South Africa is readying itself for the arrival of a flood of world leaders for the memorial service and funeral of Nelson Mandela as thousands of mourners continued to flock to sites around the country Saturday to pay homage to the freedom struggle icon. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
A condolence book for former president Nelson Mandela situated outside his first township home in Alexandra in Johannesburg, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2013. Mandela moves to the house at Alexandra in 1941. South Africa is readying itself for the arrival of a flood of world leaders for the memorial service and funeral of Nelson Mandela as thousands of mourners continued to flock to sites around the country Saturday to pay homage to the freedom struggle icon. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
A boy stands in front of a painting showing former South African president Nelson Mandela out of his first township home in Alexandra in Johannesburg, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2013. Mandela moves to the house at Alexandra in 1941. South Africa is readying itself for the arrival of a flood of world leaders for the memorial service and funeral of Nelson Mandela as thousands of mourners continued to flock to sites around the country Saturday to pay homage to the freedom struggle icon. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A silver and blue plaque with the words “Mandela’s Place” mounted on the brick wall of a small, dilapidated row house is the only recognition of the world-famous statesman who lived there when he was in his early 20s: Nelson Mandela.
There aren’t even any signs in the sprawling Alexandra township to help visitors find their way along trash-strewn streets to get to the house. But the dusty and dangerous slum itself serves as a bleak reminder that nearly 20 years after Mandela became president, many of South Africa’s black communities remain mired in poverty.
A trickle of poor Alexandra residents and their children showed up on Saturday to pay their respects to the anti-apartheid champion at a makeshift shrine with a few dozen candles stuck in the ground, two bundles of wilting flowers nearby and three posters of Mandela.
Some signed a book of condolences set atop a card table by Nomalizo Xhoma, the great-granddaughter of the man who owned the house and took in borders, including Mandela.
“I’m so sad because he was our father and did so many things for us, fighting for us when people beat us during apartheid,” said Pheello Mahlaba, 11. “I’m proud to be from the same neighborhood where he lived.”
The promise of a better life has largely evaded the square-mile Alexandra township. The shabby area is in dramatic contrast to the wealthy, mostly white, Sandton suburb of Johannesburg, whose high-rise towers glisten just across a highway.
Alexandra’s hundreds of thousands of residents occupy an area meant for less than 100,000 and get by with scarce electricity, toilets that serve more than a dozen families, high unemployment, crime and rampant drug use. A project aimed at showcasing the neighborhood’s rich anti-apartheid history was abandoned years after its construction.
This is not the dynamic South Africa celebrated by tourists and world leaders. Residents say Mandela would be disappointed by the lack of progress since the end of apartheid.
“He won’t be satisfied because the place, I can say, it’s now a disaster,” says Emmanuel Mangena, a community development worker at an alcohol and drug counseling center in Alexandra.
Mandela moved to Alexandra in 1941 when he was 23 and the township’s residents were challenging white-minority rule. Mandela participated in bus boycotts here.
He stayed in Alexandra until 1943, describing the house in his autobiography as “no more than a shack, with a dirt floor, no heat, no electricity, no running water. But it was a place of my own and I was happy to have it …
“Alexandra occupies a treasured place in my heart,” Mandela said in the book, “Long Walk to Freedom.” ”It was the first place I ever lived away from home. Even though I was later to live in Orlando, a small section of Soweto, for a far longer period than I did in Alexandra, I always regarded Alexandra Township as a home where I had no specific house, and Orlando as a place where I had a house but no home.”
The area surrounding Mandela’s other home in Soweto, Johannesburg’s most famous township, is a bustling tourist attraction. Thousands of foreign tourists flock to see the bed where Mandela once slept and the Soweto museum is surrounded by vendors, artists and dancers.
That activity is conspicuously absent in Alexandra, where many people live in shacks and restaurants often consist of vendors cooking meat on ramshackle portable grills set up on crumbling sidewalks.
“There are few townships, including Soweto, that have such a rich history of the struggle for freedom. If one looks at the key moments in the struggle against white majority rule, Alexandra was in the forefront,” says Noor Nieftagodien, who co-authored a book on the history of Alexandra and teaches at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. “There’s a sense among (Alexandra residents) that they played such an important role. And people there will say they gave birth to Mandela the radical politician. It completely transformed him.”
“The lack of development of the old Alexandra is an indictment of the new South Africa,” Nieftagodien said.
South Africa has come a long way since overcoming apartheid, but it has a long way to go. The country still has a faltering education system and an uneven record on providing basic services, along with allegations of corruption and cronyism. The gulf remains wide between the wealthy white minority and millions of blacks mired in poverty.
Alexandra is typical of townships across South Africa where unemployment is even higher than the national average of 25.2 percent. The rate in Alex, as it is called, is nearly 40 percent, estimates Nieftagodien.
Alexandra has seen some improvements. In 2001, the Alexandra Renewal Project started in which the government invested more than 1 billion rand ($ 100 million). Until then Alex had been the poorest urban location in the country, Nieftagodien said.
Mandela’s former residence was not upgraded, “and now the old man’s dead, what a pity,” said Vusi Oratile, who lives nearby. The Xhoma family still owns the house, and rents it out.
“The house is not looking good,” added Swazi Ntshingila, 43. She said that while residents are very proud that Mandela stayed here, “we are not supposed to be living like this though.”
Community development worker Mangena said Alex’s drug problems are getting worse.
“Poverty is getting rife here in Alex. Crime is happening every day. It’s about drugs,” he said, adding that the drugs lead to burglaries, home break-ins and car theft. “Even laundry drying on the line, you steal it.”
Thabo Rakgonle and his friend Tebogo Simelane are among the 20-somethings out of work. On a recent weekday, they sat listening to music outside a corner store. They say they are proud to be from Alexandra, but they lament its lack of running water, toilets and sports facilities.
“He’s a warrior. He’s a great warrior,” the soft-spoken Rakgonle said of Mandela. “So I think he just actually forgot us here.”
Across the street from Mandela’s house, visible over a crumbling wall, the Alexandra Heritage Centre was built to highlight the township’s anti-apartheid history. But eight years after the building was completed, it remains empty except for the young drug-users who hang out there.
Reforming the house where Mandela lived and opening it as a landmark complete with furniture dating from when Mandela lived there could turn Alexandra into a destination point that helps the community so Mandela’s “spirit will live on,” said community leader Linda Twala. “Right now, it’s an unfinished legacy.”
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Alan Clendenning in Johannesburg contributed to this report.
Associated Press
