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Walking with Nelson Mandela’s grandson through London’s Brixton, we stop at the Hip Hop Chip Shop on the corner of Atlantic Road.

The shutters are down, revealing a series of giant rap murals.

“There’s 2Pac,” Chief Mandla Mandela says, pointing out the rappers distinctive face.

“Big L. Notorious B.I.G.” He laughs uproariously.

“I used to want to be a DJ,” he says. “But my grandfather said to me, ‘no Mandela will be a DJ!”

Instead, Mandla studied politics at Rhodes University, and is head of the Mandela clan, Chief of Mvezo, an ANC MP and in the Pan-African Parliament.

Now 44, the son of Mandela’s second son, Makgatho, he is also unmistakably his grandfather’s grandson, 6ft 4 tall with Mandela’s mischievous smile.

“Before my grandfather died I told him, ‘People keep saying how much I look like you! I must be getting old’,” Chief Mandela says. “He turned to me and said, ‘But Mandla, I am not old!’”

Chief Mandela was in Brixton this week, in his grandfather’s 100th birthday year, to launch Nelson Mandela: The Official Exhibition opening in London in February.

Aiming to “inspire people and give them the courage to live Mandela’s values”, his special visit included a tour laid on by the Black Cultural Archives.

The highlight was Brixton Leisure Centre where Nelson Mandela addressed 12,000 people – me among them – in July 1996.

Recreating the iconic picture of Mandela on the steps, Chief Mandela asks why it was Prince Charles and not PM John Major who accompanied his grandfather to Brixton on a state visit.

But his eyes twinkle. He knows who was on the right side of history.

(Image: Press Association)

“It was a hilarious but also a saddening moment for us as South Africans to have Theresa May come to South Africa and go to Robben Island and then want to claim that Britain did a lot for our struggle for liberation,” he says later.

“The British government did nothing for the liberation of South Africa. Yet the British citizens did a lot, particularly for the Anti-Apartheid Campaign – and people like Jeremy Corbyn were right in the forefront of that.

"We applaud them and we continue to pledge our support for them.”

The Labour leader was famously arrested in 1984 for opposing apartheid.

(Image: TIM ANDERSON)

“This freedom we have today we owe to the likes of Jeremy Corbyn,” Chief Mandela says.

“My grandfather and South Africans in totality would still look to him to be the conscience, the real voice of morals, in the British society.

“His heart was on the right side of history during the struggle for our liberation.”

Nelson ­Mandela’s heir would have been his eldest son Thembe, but he died in a car crash in 1969 while his father was locked in a cell on Robben Island.

(Image: TIM ANDERSON)

Next in line was Makgatho, Mandla’s father, but he died too in 2005 of HIV/AIDS.

At that time, most families would have concealed the cause of death, but Mandela chose leadership. “When my father died, my grandfather convened a family meeting,” he says.

Chief Mandela explains: “They wanted to say he’d died after a pancreas operation. He wanted to speak out about my father’s illness.

"Madiba said ‘I want to hear from Makgatho’s oldest son’. I told him, ‘I support any decision you take’. ”

South African President Thabo Mbeki was denying a link between HIV and AIDS, making Mandela’s press conference announcing his son had died from AIDS a seismic moment.

“Let us give publicity to HIV/Aids and not hide it,” Nelson Mandela said. “Because the only way of making it appear to be a normal illness just like TB, like cancer, is always to come out and say somebody has died of HIV.”

Mandla still misses his father. “People always introduce me as Nelson Mandela’s grandson, but I say no I am my father’s son,” he says.

Nelson had left Evelyn, Mandla’s grandmother and Thembe and Makgatho’s mother for Winnie Mandela during the years he spent hiding in the resistance.

He then spent 27 years in prison. “Our grandmother was left to raise Madiba’s children,” Chief Mandela says. “My grandfather always said the biggest sacrifice he made through the struggle for liberation was sacrificing his family.”

Mandla says after years of preparing Thembe to be his heir, Mandela’s relations with Makgatho, his new successor, was strained.

“He was disconnected from him, and incarcerated. And my father was protective of his mother.”

After his father’s death, Mandla was next in line, but the family was split.

(Image: Mirrorpix)

Mandla’s mother was Rayne Perry – now known as Nolusapho – who was previously married to Makgatho.

Although various Mandela grandchildren have tried to lay claim to be his heir, Mandla was clearly always his grandfather’s favourite.

His grandmother, Evelyn, Nelson Mandela’s first wife, always said: “To win Nelson’s heart, go through Mandla

Nelson Mandela had gone to great lengths to protect his grandson. “In 1986, during the emergency my grandfather saw I was taken and placed under the watch of the Royal Family in Swaziland,” Chief Mandela says.

South African politics is currently turbulent, with new President Cyril Ramaphosa facing threats within the ANC.

“President Ramaphosa was my grandfather’s preferred candidate,” says Chief Mandela. “To see him as President, feels like fulfilling Madiba’s wishes.”

(Image: TIM ANDERSON)

Wearing a Palestinian scarf, Chief Mandela – who converted to Islam in 2016 – says he sees his role as developing his grandfather’s vision of international solidarity.

“My grandfather said, ‘our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinian people,” he says.

“He said Palestine is the greatest issue in our world. We have undergone the same brutal and painful history.”

At the haunting memorial to the 116 children who died in the Soweto uprising on 16 June 1976, protesting against the regime’s attempt to enforce teaching in Afrikaans, Chief Mandela falls silent.

He then said: “My mother was one of those who treated the children, when they kept bringing them into the hospital,” he says, eventually. “But there was nothing they could do for so many”.

We stop opposite Sports Direct – once a Tesco’s where the very first boycott of South African goods was held. And we bump into Brixton royalty, the legendary Liz Obi, once in the Black Panthers.

Twenty-two years after the grandfather stopped the traffic here, Stefan, a market stall holder for 35 years, calls out to the grandson.

“Welcome to Brixton, man,” he says. “You’re part of the family”.

Nelson Mandela: The Official Exhibition makes its world premiere at 26 Leake Street in London from February 8 2019. mandelaexhibition.com