Here we are in Soweto. We just drove past Archbishop Desmond Tutu's house, the gentle Anglican cleric who preached against apartheid. I would have missed the undistinguished house entirely had, our local Soweto guide not pointed it out. It looked like virtually every other place on the crowded block, with its grilled windows, boxy shape, and brick walls. Tutu doesn't stay here much, but not because he moved uptown to fancier digs. The crowds flocking to see the famous cleric's home apparently got to be too much. The presence of the Mandela Family Museum, which is just down the block, obviously didn't help. Both Tutu and Mandela, of course, whose kind face can be seen throughout the township on monuments and billboards, won the Noble Peace Prize. No wonder it's such a popular street!

The Mandela Museum in Soweto is housed in what was once the home of Nelson Mandela, the world's most famous political prisoner and South Africa's former president. Soweto was an important locus of the struggle against apartheid, and Mandela's house seems an appropriate site for a museum that charts the long, hard-fought path to democracy.

Nelson Mandela's humble little house in Orlando West, Soweto, now called the Mandela Family Museum, is an interesting stopover for those keen to imbibe a slice of authentic history on the world's most famous former prisoner.

The museum, a house comprising four inter-leading rooms, contains a rather higgledy-piggledy assortment of memorabilia, paintings and photographs of the Mandela family, as well as a collection of honorary doctorates bestowed on Mandela by universities and institutions around the world.

There's also a boxing belt from Sugar Ray Leonard, a multi-coloured cloak presented to the former president, and a row of his old boots.

The matchbox home, at 8115 Ngakane Street, was Mandela's first house. He moved there with his first wife, Evelyn Ntoko Mase, in 1946. After their divorce in 1957, she moved out.

The museum is named after one of the first casualties of the march through Soweto on 16 June 1976, when police were ordered to shoot at a crowd of demonstrating students. Sam Nzima's photograph of the mortally wounded Hector Pieterson carried by a horrified youngster and his wailing sister came to symbolise the contribution of the youth to the liberation struggle. The museum is next to the Hector Pieterson Memorial, and the whole area has been declared a national heritage site.

Visitors move along a series of ramps and look through strategically placed windows at important scenes - including Orlando Stadium and the police station - and view exhibits such as television footage of the uprising. Participants and witnesses are invited to record their own experiences of the day. Knowledgeable tour guides include Hector's sister, Antoinette Sithole.

The Apartheid Museum, which opened in November 2001, offers a multi-media, multi-sensory walk through the history of apartheid. It has been critically acclaimed in South Africa and abroad.

A team of filmmakers, historians, designers, architects and curators have crafted a dramatic and moving experience for the museum's visitors. Tickets are plastic cards that indicate "white" or "non-white"; footage of police vehicles driving through the township can be viewed from a Casspir itself; and 121 nooses hang from the roof, representing political prisoners executed during the apartheid years.

The experience, however, is largely audiovisual. Film and video footage collected from around the world documents the history of South Africa under apartheid - from the building of Afrikaner nationalism and life in the townships, to black and white resistance to this iniquitous system. Visitors can leave their own historical artefacts - passbooks, for example - and photographs, and record their experiences under apartheid.