Nana had a married sister, Doris, who was married to Job Mosieleng and lived in Ga-Rankuwa, near Pretoria. So she would partly stay with Doris and partly with me while we searched for our own home. Fortunately, that search for a house in Pretoria was quickly rewarded, thanks to the kindness of the Mabopane Township Manager of the time, Mr Phalatsi.

Mabopane, where we found our home, was a construct of the apartheid government, erecting new black cities for the so-called homelands, the Bantustans. Located some forty kilometres northwest of Pretoria, the township was designed to house most of the people who were being relocated out of Atteridgeville, which was seen as too close to the city.

It was relatively easy to find housing in Mabopane because the government of the day was encouraging black people to populate all those homes, which had been built by the state to promote its designs of racial separation. And the idea was to give credence to the concept that Africans were accepting having to move into their own homelands.

Mr Phalatsi, like most people that we met, listened attentively to my account of events since my release from Robben Island in 1969 and my banishment to Chloe.

Before I could even finish retelling the tale of our banishment, he stood up and said, ‘I’m going to make sure that by the end of this very day, we have found you and your wife a place to live in this township!’ After that he ordered us into his car.

We drove around Mabopane, viewing several empty homes in the newlyconstructed township. Finally, we found a house on a large plot of some 1 500 square metres which he had reserved for a municipality official.

He asked us if we were interested, and recommended that we should take it because there weren't that many houses on stands that size.

With alacrity, we accepted the offer. Our own home! Very pregnant Nana and I could barely contain ourselves. Our baby would have a home of his very own! Of course, the house would be rented from the municipality; it was not a freehold title. All the houses were identical; that was the pattern of old South Africa. The unpaved gravel streets had no names either.