Mandela's 1st township home shows lack of progress

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 neighbourhood 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 1,00,000 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 neighbourhood'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 counselling 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 ...