Owners of Chancellor House where Mandela began his legal practice risked their lives

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Chancellor House in Johannesburg where Mandela and Tambo started their law practice.  [PHOTO: MAXWELL AGWANDA/STANDARD]

By MACHUA KOINANGE

SOUTH AFRICA: At the corner of Fox and Gerard Sekoto Street stands an imposing two storey red brick building.

If the bricks could talk, they would recount stories of Nelson Mandela’s first foray into legal practice.

Known as Chancellor House, and located in the very heart of Johannesburg’s CBD, the building was renovated in 2010 and is now a museum. It was here that Mandela and Tambo Attorneys opened their practice in 1952 and became the epicentre of the first seeds of resistance to apartheid.

It was here that besides representing poor clients in need of legal services, plans were drawn about fighting apartheid at a time when many blacks felt threatened and were drowning under inhuman apartheid laws.

Four years earlier Hendrik Verwoerd, then prime minster of South Africa had legalised apartheid into the nations laws. Mandela and Oliver Tambo, who later became President of the ANC were way out of their league trying to run a legal practice and bravely challenge and bring down the pillars of apartheid from the law courts.

But even the owners of the building, the Essa family from Polokwane in Limpopo, were risking their business and their lives to lease their building to two black African men. The area was predominantly known to house Indians.

MANDELA’S CLIENTS

Some of Mandela and Tambo’s clients were accused of crimes against the apartheid government and disobeying apartheid laws. Many of them needed help to secure passes which were a must to allow them to move around the country. Blacks would be arrested and jailed if they did not carry the passes, equivalent to the kipande (identity card) imposed by the Kenyan colonial Government during the emergency.

Chancellor House was renovated and opened its doors to the public in 2010. The building now forms part of the history of the struggle for liberation and the vicious fight to end draconian apartheid laws.

Before its renovation, the building had been abandoned and was crumbling. It had been invaded by street people who had converted it into a den to live and conduct their own activities.

Once it was identified as a museum the renovators used old pictures of the building to restore it to its former glory. It became a valuable addition to the many buildings dotted across South Africa that tell the story of Mandela and the struggle for freedom.

Other buildings include the Mandela house in Soweto, the tiny red brick house in Alexandra where Mandela first called home when he arrived in Johannesburg from Transkei.

And then there is the YMCA boxing and training gym where Mandela showed his flair for boxing during his youthful days.

A new roof to Chancellor House has replaced the dilapidated one. According to the museum, new ground floor windows have been installed, and the three small rooms of the second-floor offices, where Mandela and Tambo once practiced as South Africa’s first ever black law firm, were re-laid with parquet flooring.

Chancellor House is now described as “a dignified freedom struggle museum that resonates with the spirit of the two remarkable men who changed South African history”.