Nelson Mandela's life in places

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”

As Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, the world’s most triumphant opponent of apartheid and South Africa’s most celebrated President, battles death bravely in a hospital in Pretoria, a nation prays. This nation – Mandela’s South Africa – is one he tore free from slavery, from racial prejudice and the grip of draconian laws in flagrant violation of human rights and liberties.

On his long walk to freedom, Nelson Mandela tramped the dust of several places in South Africa, places that may appear unchanged to the unobservant eye. Yet, freedom has altered these places in ways unimaginable. Here, black people and white now share near-equitable rights, a reality fervently and violently dreamed of but unrealizable during Mandela’s childhood and youth. Mandela, as the world now knows, has been the catalyst of that change.

Explore these places. From Mvezo, where he was born, to Qunu, where he attended primary school, and to Robben Island and Paarl where he was imprisoned for nearly two decades, we trace Mandela’s journey through the places that shaped his vision, and whose place on the map he changed, perhaps forever.