July 23, 2004
By Jonews Reporter
THE Freedom of the City is the highest recognition a city can pay to acknowledge a person's contribution to the welfare of the city and its inhabitants. Nelson Mandela is the third person to receive this award from the City of Johannesburg. The other recipients - both figures in the liberation struggle - were Walter Sisulu, in 1997, and Beyers Naude, in 2001.
Mandela is being honoured for his outstanding contribution to the struggle for freedom and democracy, and for his promotion of equality.
Here's how the City and its citizens have honoured Madiba:
The Nelson Mandela Bridge
PARIS has its Eiffel Tower, New York its Statue of Liberty, Sydney its Harbour Bridge. Johannesburg has the largest cable-stayed bridge in southern Africa. Who else to name it after but Nelson Mandela, the man who led South Africa across the apartheid divide?
The Nelson Mandela Bridge
Two years and R38-million in the making, the spectacular Nelson Mandela Bridge has emerged as a new landmark in Gauteng, and holds out the promise of a rejuvenated Johannesburg inner city.
The 284-metre long bridge crosses over 42 operational railway lines in linking Braamfontein and the north of Johannesburg to Newtown in the heart of the city's central business district, and is the centre-piece of a R300-million inner city renewal project driven by the province's economic development initiative, Blue IQ.
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The Alex home
THE humble abode in Alexandra township, which Nelson Mandela occupied when he first came to Joburg during the early 1940s, is being transformed into a heritage attraction site.
The humble abode in Alex
The yard and the room that he rented are being developed into what will be known as the Mandela Yard Interpretation Centre. The site is located at the intersection of Hofmeyer Street and 7th Avenue. At present it is unoccupied, but tourist guides are already bringing people there.
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The Old Fort
A project to document memories of former prisoners of the Fort, a historic prison which gained notoriety for its brutal treatment of prisoners for almost a century, promises to shed light on the experiences of its inmates and to bring that past alive to present day visitors to the new Constitution Hill Precinct.
The Fort boasts the distinction of being the only prison in the world to have had both Mahatma Ghandi and Nelson Mandela as inmates.
Ghandi served his term at the Fort in 1906, while Mandela spent time as an awaiting-trial prisoner at the prison in 1962 prior to the Rivonia Trial.
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Mandela museum
VILAKAZI Street in Orlando West, Soweto is no ordinary township street. It's a street where two Nobel Peace Prize winners, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, once resided.
Tutu's house has blue-grey walls and electric fencing, with a white house peeping over the walls. It has a neat pavement garden with shrubs and trees.
Up the hill is the Mandela home from the 1960s, now a museum run by his former wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. It's a matchbox house comprising four inter-leading rooms, containing memorabilia from the short time they had together before Mandela went into hiding, was arrested and eventually imprisoned for 27 years.
You can visit Nelson Mandela's house - now a popular tourist attraction.
Liliesleaf farm
IT was to be the last meeting at the secret headquarters of the banned African National Congress - at Liliesleaf Farm, a smallholding in Rivonia.
The leadership had been worried for some time that police had learned of their hideout on the smallholding.
In the afternoon of 11 July 1963 a dry-cleaning van drove up to the door. No-one had ordered dry cleaning. Armed policemen burst out . . . and from that moment, the word 'Rivonia' became synonymous around the world with the silencing of black resistance in South Africa.
The key leaders of the armed wing of the ANC, including Nelson Mandela, had operated from its outhouses for two years. In those days, Rivonia consisted of a rural patchwork of smallholdings, riding schools and farms, with few tarred roads.
Today, it has been engulfed by the northern expansion of Johannesburg. There are plans to set up a Liliesleaf Trust, restore what's left of the farm, and perhaps even turn it into a conference retreat.
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Madiba's old sparring ground
SOWETANS had waited more than 23 years to witness a boxing tournament in Orlando - the old training ground of Nelson Mandela.
That drought was broken when the City of Johannesburg co-hosted a World Boxing Council (WBC) superfeatherweight eliminator clash between South Africa's Mzonke Fana and Randy Suico of the Philippines at the Orlando Community Hall.
Madiba used to train in the hall as an amateur boxer.
The community hall played a central role in the affairs of the local residents for more than 60 years, but over the years it became less and less key in the lives of Sowetans.
Now the area is being revived, with the opening of a brand new multi-function venue that will be able to stage major sports and entertainment events.
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Kapitan's
THE Chinese lanterns look new, but the rest of the décor at Kapitan's could have been planted there long ago, from the bullfighting posters to the football stickers, the fairy lights and flags of all nations.
A visiting Texan claims Kapitan's looks like a bar in the Mexican border city of Tijuana.
In the 1950s, a young black lawyer named Nelson Mandela used to stop in for the best curry in Johannesburg.
In 1989, some five months before his release from 27 years in prison, Mandela wrote to say he had heard Kapitan's was going to close, and he expressed his sorrow that palates would henceforth be denied the delights of Kappy's kitchen.
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The Saxon
THE Saxon markets itself as the place where former president Nelson Mandela edited Long Walk to Freedom, but it wasn't a hotel in those days - it was the palatial home of insurance magnate Douw Steyn, now relocated to the UK.
The year was 1990, Mandela had just been released from prison and his own home wasn't ready. So he whiled away a few weeks in these extraordinary surroundings, finishing his book.
Ten years later, the house was redesigned to become what may be Sandton's plushest hotel. Mandela memorabilia line the walls - drawings of Madiba in the boxing ring, in his law office, in consultation with his comrade-in-arms, Walter Sisulu.
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The Mandela theatre
THE Johannesburg Civic Theatre in Braamfontein is made up of the Mandela Theatre, the Tesson Theatre and People's Theatre.
The Mandela Theatre is the biggest of the three - with a seating capacity of 1 061 people and is the most sought after theatre in South Africa, especially by overseas production companies.
The interior of the theatre is breath-taking. It is dim inside; the air-conditioner keeps the fresh air coming and the comfortable red chairs bring dignity to the place. Its stage covers 400 square metres.
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Sandton statue
ANY toast to Nelson Mandela would have to be larger than life - and those who gathered to see his eldest granddaughter, Ndileka Mandela, uncover the statue in Sandton agreed that the giant effigy exuded his positive vibe.
The statue of Mandela, in Nelson Mandela Square, is six metres tall, higher than the world's tallest recorded giraffe of 5.9m. It weighs 2.5 tons, the weight of an African white rhino. It measures 2.3m from elbow to elbow, the maximum wingspan of the African fish eagle, and has a shoulder width of 1.7m, almost the width of a luxury sedan. The statue's shoes measure virtually one metre in length - a boot size very few can fill.
The statue was sculpted by Kobus Hattingh and Jacob Maponyane, a team with many accolades under their belt. The bronze statue was commissioned in July 2002, completed in February 2004, and moved to the square during the middle of the night to be installed, ahead of the unveiling.
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