Mthatha travel guide

It is believed that a clan of the Tembu tribe had a custom interring their dead by casting them into the river with the entreaty ‘mThate Bawo’ (Take him, Father) and that this was the origin of the name of the river on which Mthatha was founded. Today Mthatha is an impoverished, sprawling, unattractive modern town full of cheap supermarkets and discount liquor stores with a small grid of historical buildings at its core. Founded in 1871, it was the capital of Transkei from 1976 to 1994 and has grown to be a busy administrative centre. The N2 passes through the city centre where some of the oldest buildings are located, including the City Hall built in 1908 and the Bhunga (parliament) Building dating from 1927. The latter is now home to the Nelson Mandela National Museum, the town’s only sight, but definitely worth a stop for an understanding of how homelands such as the Transkei were created under the Apartheid system, and to learn more about the man.