The home of the former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, has been transformed into a luxurious hotel. According to reports, the anti-apartheid revolutionary lived in the house for almost eight years before moving to another home with his third wife, Graca Machel.
The building, hidden on a quiet street in a wealthy suburb of Johannesburg, had been defaced by squatters but has now been transformed into a boutique hotel following a massive renovation. The former home of Mandela, which is now a business venture, is in honor of the political leader who passed away in 2013 aged 95.
Known as Sanctuary Mandela, the hotel has nine rooms and a restaurant with a Mandela-inspired menu. “You couldn’t go wrong with Tata [Mandela] when you give him vegetables, but it must be a variety of vegetables, because he will tell you that . . . there must be color of the vegetables on the plate,” chef Xoliswa Ndoyiya, who cooked for Mandela and his family for two decades, told Reuters.
“He loved very much oxtail stew of which right now here we are having a ravioli, taken from the oxtail stew, so we made it a ravioli.”
The hotel also features memorabilia honoring the former South African leader.
According to the New York Post, it will cost visitors $260 per night to nearly $1,000 for the Presidential Suite. The Presidential Suite happens to be Mandela’s bedroom. The window frames bear his nickname “Madiba” and his Robben Island prison number “466/64.” The hotel can accommodate up to 18 guests.
According to the managers of the hotel, it is not a museum but it was remodeled to keep Mandela’s legacy.
“It is not supposed to be a museum. We wish to maintain a legacy, but it needs to be self-sustaining, it needs to stay alive,” general manager Dimitri Maritz said, according to News24.
Mandela is synonymous with the anti-apartheid struggle and invariably evokes memories of one man’s fight to positively change his immediate society and the world at large.
He spent 27 years in prison for attempting to overthrow the apartheid regime. After leaving prison, Mandela worked hard to ensure that human rights were respected and South Africans had a better future.
Click here for photos of his home-turned-hotel.
