Mandela house to become living museum

0 Comments | AFP, August, 2008

CAPE TOWN (AFP) — Former South African President Nelson Mandela on Wednesday signed his Cape Town home over to the city for use as a living museum.

Jakes Gerwel, chairman of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation, one of Mandela's three charity organisations, said the house had been Mandela's "only home outside of prison in the Western Cape."

The nobel peace prize laureate, who was South Africa's first black president, spent 27 years imprisoned in jailhouses in the province by the white minority apartheid government.

A frail, but smiling Mandela sat through Wednesday's proceedings without speaking.

City premier Lynne Brown said the project would see Mandela's home become "our investment for young people" and would in future host youth leadership programmes....