The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

national heritage, even when those exchanges expressed criticism of dominant heritage
interpretations.
On a three or four occasions in 2000, soon after I had been appointed to SAHRA’s
Council, I found myself summoned to the Umtata and Mvezo sites of the Nelson
Mandela Museum along with Mandela biographic researcher and my fellow
councillor, Luli Callinicos, in order to prevent the seeming destruction of part of the
material remains of the homestead where Mandela had been born. The museum was in
its initial stages of development, an exhibition had just been installed by a curatorial
consultancy at the Bhunga building in Umtata, and the Mandela gifts had been put on
display. In this start‐up phase, considerable emphasis was being placed by the project
manager and DACST on infrastructural development that needed to be completed
within rigid budget cycles. The Museum Council had begun to meet and to acquaint
itself with its responsibilities, the Mandela family representatives on the Council had
not been able to attend many meetings, and some oral history training was happening
with volunteers from Qunu in preparation for oral history research on Mandela’s
childhood in Qunu. 7
In this uncertain setting, plans began to be executed to create a raised walkway across
the centre of the Mvezo homestead, and in the process, the project manager had
authorised holes to be dug through the homestead in preparation for building the
7 As was our practice, Luli Callinicos and I used the opportunity to talk about the progress of the
various heritage projects we were working with. These discussions followed on from the
exchanges we once had on national television about biographies of leaders and history from
below (see Chapter Three). Some of our discussions were about Nelson Mandela’s visits to District
Six in the late 1940s, and more generally about the progress of her manuscript on the Mandela
trail, as well as her study of Oliver Tambo’s life. Among the issues we discussed was her research
on the decision by Oliver Tambo and the ANC in the mid‐1960s to ‘build up’ Mandela as a
figurehead to galvanise anti‐apartheid solidarity work. It also seemed that in the preparation of
her Mandela manuscript for publication, some material needed to be cut, and that her valuable
section on Mandela’s “growing reputation” was being considered as a sacrificial possibility. I
would like to think that the urgings I made on the importance of this section contributed in some
small measure to its retention in the book (See Luli Callinicos, The World that Made Mandela). Later,
the book had its Cape Town launch in the District Six Museum, at which I was asked to be the
host on behalf of the Museum to introduce Albie Sachs, who was the main speaker.
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