Nelson Mandela refuge to be turned into luxury boutique hotel?
Vacant land around the ANC refuge where Nelson Mandela spent the last days of freedom before his arrest and subsequent 27 years in prison is to be used to build a boutique hotel to complement a historical museum currently open there.
As South Africa prepares to celebrate 20 years since Mr Mandela’s release on February 11th 1990, three acres of land on Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, north of Johannesburg, are set to be developed into a 75million rand hotel (around £6million).
Construction on the 48-room hotel is likely to begin in June and the property is scheduled to open in September 2011.
Guests will check into a building with a momentous history. As apartheid raged in South Africa, Liliesleaf Farm was purchased in 1961 on behalf of the South African Communist Party and was used as the headquarters of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military arm of the African National Congress.
Mandela sought solace here in the days before his arrest and imprisonment on political charges. The property was the scene of the famous raid on July 11th 1963 when police, disguised in dry-cleaning and florist vans, burst into the buildings and arrested senior leaders of the resistance.
The subsequent trial, known as the Rivonia Trial, placed a global spotlight on South African politics.
In 2001, former president Thabo Mbeki created the Liliesleaf Trust to protect the buildings.
Nicholas Wolpe CEO of the Trust and son of lawyer Harold Wolpe who escaped after being arrested at Liliesleaf and spent 30 years in exile in the UK told TravelMail: “This is not a commercial venture, it’s more about making Liliesleaf self-sustaining. We thought about the best way to do this and a hotel seemed to fit.
“Liliesleaf played a crucial, seminal role in the liberation struggle and it’s important for the world to understand that role.”
There will be historic exhibits in the hotel and suites will be named after key players in South Africa’s struggle for racial equality, with each suite including individual biographies.
Liliesleaf reopened its doors in June 2008, as an interactive museum and tribute “to the prominent political leaders who once congregated on its property and the ideals, beliefs and ideologies these men represented against the face of Grand Apartheid”.
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