Route and landmarks on the Mandela~Biko~Woods Trail

A trail, beginning in East London, running through the Amatola region and into Mbashe, takes in many of the historical footprints left by Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko, Donald Woods and the Soga family.

eMonti (East London)

Starting in East London, the first stops along the way are the home of Donald Woods, which still has one of several bullet holes left by apartheid’s Security Police during their reign of terror in the mid-1970s, a place visited a number of times by Steve Biko – an act which broke his banning orders.

Donald Woods’ old newspaper, the Daily Dispatch, is a well-preserved colonial building in Caxton Street, where he was editor from 1965 – 1977, when he was banned. An earlier East London newspaper editor was Alan Kirkland Soga, son of Tiyo Soga, who was appointed Editor of “Izwi Labantu” in 1899 after a spell as an Asssitant Magistrate.

East London is also the place where Donald Woods was laid to rest in Cambridge Cemetery. Other key figures in South Africa history are also buried in East London. Revd Walter Rubusana, the leading figure at the formation of the ANC and key member of the delegation sent to lobby the British Monarchy in 1914 after the franchise was denied to black South Africans, and Clements Kadalie, leader of the ICU, the largest political and union movement in South Africa during the 1930s.

Outside the City Hall is a statue of Steve Biko, which Woods commissioned and which was unveiled by Nelson Mandela in 1997. The main bridge across the Buffalo River was also renamed on the same day as the Steve Biko Bridge. Just across the bridge is Fort Glamorgan Prison, where Biko was once detained and further subjected to apartheid’s brutality. It was here that Wendy Woods once visited Steve Biko in gaol.

Amatola

Heading along the Buffalo River, one arrives in Ginsberg, Biko’s hometown, where a bust of Biko still stands in the garden of his mother’s home. Biko’s widow, Ntsiki, still lives in Ginsberg and is a Trustee of the Steve Biko Foundation, which supports community programmes in the region.

The Steve Biko Foundation now has headquarters in both King Williamstown and Johannesburg. The Eastern Cape base in King Williamstown is worth a visit, and with prior appointment, expert guides on both the community-development work of the Foundation, as well as key landmarks in the life of Steve Biko can be provided. Further details on the Foundation can be found at www.sbf.org .

Just a few blocks away, the Steve Biko Foundation is in the process of acquiring the old community centre in Leopold Street, which served as Biko’s office for many years, as well as the place where Biko first met Donald Woods. One can still see the old Victoria Ground where multitudes flocked to Biko’s funeral in 1977, a short walk away from the Biko Garden of Remembrance, where he was laid to rest. In King Williamstown itself, are a trio of impressive museums which feature Xhosa, Settler and Missionary history in the region.

Further up the road towards Cathcart is the turning off to Mgwali, where Tiyo Soga was born in 1829 and later established a Mission Station, which featured in the Frontier Wars of resistance to colonial rule and was a focal point for the growth of the African intelligentsia. After graduation and ordination in Scotland, Tiyo Soga returned to the Eastern Cape and wrote for a newspaper “Indaba”, translated four gospels for the Xhosa bible, composed several hymns, including “Lizalis’ idinga Lakho”, translated John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” and established a number of mission stations, including one at Mgwali, which still stands.

Tiyo Soga died in 1871, aged 42 at Chief Sandile’s side. In the same region is the burial place of the great Xhosa chief, Sandile, on which a bust of him now stands.

Further north, and prior to his editorship of Izwi Labantu, AK Soga – a qualified lawyer – was appointed Assistant Magistrate at St Marks in the upper Kei river area.

As one follows the line of forts used by colonial authorities during the Frontier Wars, one comes to the first black university in Southern Africa, established in 1916, Fort Hare at Alice, where Nelson Mandela, among many other great African leaders studied, including Oliver Tambo, Robert Sobukwe, Govan Mbeki, Seretse Khama and the journalist, Can Themba.

Thembuland

As one moves from Amatola into Thembuland, the inland Mission School of Clarkebury is where Mandela was educated as a boy. It was at school at the age of 7 where young Rolihlahla Mandela was given the name “Nelson” by one of the mission school teachers.

In his late teens, Mandela moved to the Great Place of the Thembu Royal Household to develop his education as an advisor and counsellor to the Thembu Royal Family, prior to going on to a more formal education at university.

Further along the road is Mthatha, where Mandela is famously pictured in 1937, aged 19, and where the old Bunga building now serves as a museum in his honour.

Mbashe

On the banks of the Mbashe River is Mvezo, where Mandela was born in 1918. The hut where he was born and in the floor of which his umbilical cord is buried, is still visible with the original foundation stones along with the other hut foundations of the Mandela family. Mvezo is where he spent the first seven years of his life, being raised as a herd-boy, and later, where the ceremony to mark his entry into adulthood took place.  Today, this site includes an open air museum.

Further along is Qunu where the Mandelas moved to when he was a child and now has a holiday home there. Further up the hill at Qunu is a new educational, community centre is established in Mandela’s name, to mark his life.

If one follows the meandering of the Mbashe river downstream through the multiple “S” shapes, one nears Miller Mission, which Tiyo Soga’s son, Dr William Anderson Soga established in 1888 and presided there as both doctor and missionary until his death in 1916. Today, marble tributes remain both inside the church and on the outside bell-tower, to the work of WA Soga, during his time there. He was succeeded by his brother, John Henderson Soga, who had established and run a mission at Mount Frere from 1893 – 1904.

After a while, WA Soga’s son, Alexander “Lex” Bogue Soga, also a medical doctor, practised at Miller Mission. Soon after Mandela’s move to Qunu, aged seven, he walked, with his mother, around 34 kilometres to gain health treatment from Dr Lex Soga at Miller Mission in 1925.

In addition to his missionary work, JH Soga completed his father’s translation of “Pilgrim’s Progress” into Xhosa; composed hymns, completed numerous translations and wrote seven books, including the first history books written by a South African: “The South-Eastern Bantu” (Lovedale Press – 1930) and “The AmaXhosa: Life and Customs” (Lovedale Press – 1931). One of the first editions was signed by the author and given to Donald Woods’ father, Jack Woods around the time of publication.

Further down the Mbashe River is the burial place of the great Xhosa Chief, Sarili. Between the Ntlonyana and Xhora Rivers is the Bomvana Great Place of the Bomvana Royal Household at Guse, near which Chief Gqambushe is buried.

Just a few miles from the mouth of the Mbashe River is Hobeni, a trading station, built by Jack Woods in the 1910s. Donald Woods, who was born in 1933 at Hobeni, with Dr Lex Soga proving vital at the birth.

In 1934 both Jack Woods and JH Soga built neighbouring seaside camps at the Mbashe River mouth – Woods’s on the Mbanyana side of the lighthouse and Soga’s at the Mbashe River mouth itself. The camps consisted of mud brick circular huts with thatched rooves. The Woods camp stands to this day.

In 1936, JH Soga retired prior to moving to England. He was held in such high esteem by the local trader and settler community, that most of the white families around the Mbashe area got together to present to him a tribute in the form of an ornate, inscribed, framed certificate of thanks in recognition of the value he brought to the community while at Miller Mission. It was signed by representatives of most of the white families in the region – something either unique or certainly very rare for this era in South African history. JH Soga died during a German air raid in London on 11th March 1941, aged 80.

Members of the Soga and Woods family are buried at Miller Mission, including Woods’ grand-mother, Alice – in 1946, father, Jack – in 1955 and mother, Edna – in 1976.

Miller Mission is also the site of one of the six clinics built to date by the Donald Woods Foundation. The clinic serves as a centre for HIV treatment and care, orphans and vulnerable children and TB. It is also the focus of the Foundation’s “Qunu~Miller Mission Challenge” which is designed to highlight the difficulties of health care access in rural areas, as well as a recreation of Mandela’s 34km walk, aged 7.