Winnie Mandela Brandfort

Photo: Gallo Images / Sunday Times / Moeletsi Mabe

This Free State town has now changed its name – to Winnie Mandela!

Thousands of residents are getting to grips with the fact they now live in ‘Winnie Mandela’, after the name change was made official on Friday.

Winnie Mandela Brandfort

Photo: Gallo Images / Sunday Times / Moeletsi Mabe

It may now be time to stop putting ‘Brandfort’ into your GPS. The town is undergoing an official name change, after Arts and Culture Minister Nathi Mthethewa confirmed that it would now be known simply as Winnie Mandela.

Brandfort gets a new name…

The urbanised region, which lies 60km to the north of Bloemfontein, has a deep historical connection with the apartheid struggle hero. Winnie Mandela spent many years living in Brandfort while her husband Nelson was in jail. The town will now bear her name, as part of a wider national project to change the identity of certain locations.

Port Elizabeth, Uitenhage, and King Williams Town all became Gqeberha, Kariega, and Qonce earlier this year. Brandfort is the fourth major settlement to get the makeover treatment – after it was announced by Mthethwa today.

“I, Nathi, Mthethwa, Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture officially approved the following geographical name, in terms of Section 10 (2) of the South African Geographical Names Council Act (Act No 118 of 1998). Winnie Mandela will now be the official name of the town which was Brandfort, Free State.”

Welcome to Winnie Mandela!

Despite being the most famous resident of Brandfort, she had something of a love-hate relationship with the town:

  • Winne Mandela was actually banished to Brandfort in May 1977.
  • She lived at house number 802 in the Black township in Brandfort.
  • At the area had no running water and electricity, and she moved into a house with ‘no floors or ceilings’.
  • That’s probably why, in her autobiography, the iconic freedom fighter was a little scathing with her old digs.

“It’s a drab and dusty rural hamlet with unimaginative houses, an old-fashioned two-story hotel, small shops lining the main street, and a pervading atmosphere of lethargy and inactivity… The forlorn township had no official name but the black residents had baptised it ‘Phathakahle’ – meaning handle with care.”

Nonetheless, the town flourished as a community in the years that followed, building a solid and respectable reputation for itself. But complaints about the decay of Brandfort are now rife – and ‘Phathakahle’ has been in short supply recently.