Mandela Visits His Childhood Soweto Home

Nelson R. Mandela returned today to the four-room brick house he remembered as home for 27 years, but it has become a monument, surrounded day and night by people hoping for a glimpse of him.

His wife, Winnie, built him a mansion on a hill three years ago, but suffered severe criticism for it.

Mandela spent his first two nights of freedom in large homes in neighborhoods designated for whites.

Close associates said today the black leader had wanted to go straight from prison Sunday to the small house on a corner built when the Orlando section of Soweto was being established in the early 1940s. Mandela worked for the municipal government then.

The press and some members of the public criticized Winnie Mandela when she had a 15-room, $200,000 home built on a hillside in 1987.

She said Mandela deserved to live in such a house when he was freed, but he sent word from prison that he did not want to enjoy such luxury amid the poverty of 2.5 million people in Soweto, the huge black township outside Johannesburg.

Vandals did extensive damage to the empty mansion, known in Soweto as “Winnie’s Palace.” It has been refurbished recently, but no one has said why.

Mandela and his first wife, Evelyn, moved into the small house in Soweto when it was new and their four children spent their childhoods in it.

They were divorced in 1957 and Mandela later brought his new wife, Winnie, to the house. An outbuilding in the yard contains several bedrooms where Winnie Mandela’s notorious bodyguard stayed until it was disbanded last year.

The house was nearly gutted in July, 1988, when boys from a nearby high school set it afire during a battle with members of the bodyguard.