‘I Was Not Born With a Hunger to Be Free’. Nelson Mandela’s Early Journeys towards Political Awareness

Not born with a ‘hunger for freedom’: changing self-understanding

On the second-to-last page of his autobiography, Nelson Mandela makes the remarkable statement, ‘I was not born with a hunger to be free’. He immediately explains this by saying

I was born free – free in every way that I could know. Free to run in the fields near my mother’s hut, free to swim in the clear stream that ran through my village, free to roast mealies under the stars and ride the broad backs of slow-moving bulls. As long as I obeyed my father and abided by the customs of my tribe, I was not troubled by the laws of man or God.

We can easily see that, like all of us, Mandela was free in every way that was within his imagination or visible in the environment he inhabited, and he immediately describes the places where he exercised his freedoms. As with everyone, Mandela admits that he did not immediately comprehend the world beyond what he saw and understood it to comprise and mean.

The unfolding of Mandela’s life entails understanding how he came to broaden his world beyond that which he inhabited physically and intellectually and how he occupied spaces beyond those where he first experienced a sense of freedom. Even when he is in prison his life is simultaneously the world he inhabits and also part of a wider world that has not yet come into being, but which he imagines. The journey continues in his consciousness and also in his interactions with fellow prisoners and the authorities. His consciousness is not confined to the world the jailers made. In prison, he and others document how political prisoners exercised considerable agency, despite the adverse conditions within which they found themselves (Buntman, 2003; Mandela, 1994: 365–498).

The journey of Mandela’s life, his long and difficult ‘walks’, have had an impact on his consciousness of self in relation to other boys, men and other people, in particular in relation to his identity as a member of the abaThembu kingdom of the Xhosa speaking people and as part of a broader range of Xhosa (Xhosa speakers or the wider range of clans loosely referred to as Xhosa). Later, Mandela identifies himself as an African, an identity towards which he was moving and with which he finds expression in the formation of the African National Congress Youth League in 1944. Initially, with some early resistance on his part, he embraced other identities including non-African ones, notably after the adoption of the Freedom Charter, at the Congress of the People in 1955. Mandela is well known for his opposition to cooperation with whites, Indians and Communists during the 1940s and up until the early 1950s (Mandela, 1994: Chapter 12). The extent of his political development is embraced in the opening words of the Freedom Charter, which declares that South Africa ‘belongs to all who live in it, black and white’, an inclusiveness that he had earlier rejected and would be one of the main reasons for the secession from the ANC of many of his erstwhile Africanist comrades.

The second very significant way in which his self-understanding changes and changes very slowly is in his consciousness of being oppressed and his relationship to the people who were his oppressors, how he saw whites and how he came to ready himself to struggle for freedom. Not only does he admit that he had the illusion of freedom in his earliest days, but even after moving into different surroundings, including his period at Fort Hare University, often seen as an institution that groomed future freedom fighters, Mandela remained unclear about how he evaluated what the whites ‘brought’ to South Africa. Even in Johannesburg in 1941, Mandela does not immediately respond to a situation where a colleague takes actions against racism in the law firm that he enters (Mandela, 1994: 67).

More generally, after he identified a relationship of oppression, he was fairly slow in concluding that he had to act against this. What he decided to do and how he saw himself in relation to other South Africans in this quest also changed over time. In many cases, his early responses were mediated by his surroundings and his desire to act in accordance with what the regent, who became his guardian, considered to be right for a man who would become counsellor to the future Thembu king (see Mandela, 1994: 1–56.)

Journeys, rites of passage and liminality

If much of Mandela’s life comprised journeys, their content varied. Many of these were rites of passage from one condition to another, physical movement from one place to another, from one status to another, from one way of understanding the world to another. For example, from being a bachelor to being married and later from being married to being single, but divorced and then married again. Politically, there were rites of passage from legality to illegality, from freedom or relative freedom to imprisonment and many others.

While the notion of rites of passage is primarily associated with ceremonies, like baptism or marriage, which imply that a change of status occurs through participating in a ceremony at a specific moment in time, the way that rites are referred to here is to suggest that they are not necessarily completed through any single event. In particular, Mandela’s transition to manhood does not begin nor is it completed through the initiation ceremony. Likewise, while he becomes a prisoner at a particular moment, there are ‘rites of passage’ towards that status through his living in a twilight zone, evading the law, but not immediately apprehended and pronounced a prisoner.

As indicated, not every journey meant that the previous state of being or place of being permanently disappeared or had no importance in Mandela’s consciousness or existence. For example, in relation to his identity as a Thembu – in many situations, despite changes in his existence, these earlier qualities would remain part of his being or identity. His place of birth, Qunu, continued to have meaning for Mandela, who built a home there, which he frequented in his last years and where he was buried. This he connected to manhood, telling Sampson that ‘a man should die near where he was born’ (Sampson, 1999: 3).

His identity as a Thembu is manifested dramatically when he appears in court in 1962, dressed in the attire of abaThembu, objecting to being tried as a ‘black man in a white man’s court’ (Mandela, 1994: 311, where he speaks of wearing ‘a traditional Xhosa leopard-skin Kaross instead of a suit and tie’ ³ ).

Transitions or rites of passage do not always happen or become completed quickly and the word liminality has been used to capture the transitional period, where a person is in one place or condition, occupies a particular status, but has a tendency or desire to move, and hovers before making or even failing to make a transition to another place or status. Liminality refers to thresholds between one state of being and another (Turner, 1969: Chapters 3 and 4; Van Gennep, 1960 [1909]). A liminal space is somewhere ‘in between’, neither having left where one is nor made the transition to where one wants to be or is going to be, that is, ‘betwixt and between’. Mandela’s life is suffused with rites of passage, one of the most significant early ones being his initiation to manhood and as he indicates, it is filled with ambiguity and complexity, some of which he only comes to realise gradually and after it has happened, as analysed in the discussion of his initiation, below, and the later reference to becoming a man after his leading the Defiance Campaign of 1952 (Mandela, 1994: 28–29).

An examination of Mandela’s autobiography reveals a series of ways in which he is seen and sees himself, with his life apparently destined and settled as unfolding in a particular way, in his earlier years, before 1941. After that, as new factors and ways of seeing the world enter his consciousness, he often hovers in a liminal space before making the transition to another state of being or identity, added to or supplanting one that has been his before. This liminality is notable in his adult years in the 1950s where Mandela and others inhabit a twilight world between legality and illegality, while the ANC is a legal organisation but many leaders have to operate in a clandestine manner due to government restrictions and even prepare for the future illegality of the organisation and for the possibility of armed struggle (Mandela, 1994: 114–249). His first act of law-breaking in the Defiance campaign of 1952 is described in Chapter 14, and his preparing the M-Plan for underground organisation is depicted in Chapter 15. Sisulu, Mandela, and some others also discussed taking up arms long before it was on the agenda of the ANC (Mandela, 1994: 148).

Mandela’s first journey: leaving Qunu

Upon the death of his father, Mandela experienced an early upheaval and journey-signifying changes of substantial import. ⁴ When he was nine years old, his mother took him to be raised by the abaThembu Regent, Chief Jongintaba Dalindyebo. He was not told why he was leaving Qunu and where he was going (a pattern that would be replicated much later, when he was in prison, where there were sometimes sudden unexplained movements). Looking back, he remarks in a prose that evokes a rite of passage and a change in his life:

I packed the few things I possessed and early one morning … set out on a journey westward to my new residence. I mourned less for my father than for the world I was leaving behind. Qunu was all that I knew, and I loved it in the unconditional way that a child loves his first home. Before we disappeared behind the hills, I turned and looked for what I imagined was the last time at my village. I could see the simple huts and the people going about their chores; the stream where I had splashed and played with the other boys; the maize fields and green pastures where the herds and flocks were lazily grazing. I imagined my friends out hunting in the pond at the end of the stream. Above all else, my eyes rested on the three simple huts where I had enjoyed my mother’s love and protection. It was these three huts that I associated with all my happiness, with life itself…. I could not imagine that the future I was walking towards could compare in any way with the past that I was leaving behind.

Mandela travelled with his mother by foot and in silence,

an exhausting journey, along rocky dirt roads, up and down hills, past numerous villages, but we did not pause. Late in the afternoon, at the bottom of a shallow valley surrounded by trees, we came upon a village at the centre of which was a large and gracious home that so far exceeded anything that I had ever seen that all I could do was marvel at it. …In the shade of two gum trees that graced the doorway of the front of the main house sat a group of about twenty tribal elders. Encircling the property, contentedly grazing on the rich land, was a herd of at least fifty cattle and perhaps five hundred sheep. Everything was beautifully tended, and it was a vision of wealth and order beyond my imagination. This was the Great Place Mqhekezweni, the provisional capital of Thembuland, the royal residence of Chief Jongintaba Dalindyebo, acting regent of the Thembu people.

As Mandela viewed this grandeur an enormous car rumbled through the western gate and the men sitting in the shade immediately doffed their hats and then jumped to their feet saluting Jongintaba, ‘Bayete a-a-a, Jongintaba!’ (‘Hail, Jongintaba!’).

The man stepping out of the car struck Mandela as having the confidence and bearing of one

who was used to the exercise of authority. His name suited him, for Jongintaba literally meant ‘One who looks at the mountains’, and he was a man with a sturdy presence upon whom all eyes gazed. …This was the regent who was to become my guardian and benefactor for the next decade.

Mandela’s sense of what comprised his world was shaken, and its boundaries widened:

In that moment of beholding Jongintaba and his court I felt like a sapling pulled root and branch from the earth and flung into the centre of a stream whose strong current I could not resist. I felt a sense of awe mixed with bewilderment. Until then I had had no thoughts of anything but my own pleasures, no higher ambitions than to eat well and become a champion stick-fighter. I had no thought of money, or class, or fame, or power. Suddenly a new world opened before me….I felt many of my established beliefs and loyalties begin to ebb away. The slender foundation built by my parents began to shake. In that instant, I saw that life might hold more for me than being a champion stick-fighter.

The new circumstances that opened before Mandela ruptured his previous world, but at the same time, while life did hold out more possibilities for him, he entered a domain where he was subject to very distinct expectations, in preparation for becoming a counsellor to the future king.

Later Mandela learnt that Jongintaba had offered to become his guardian after his father’s death. He would treat him in the same way as his other children and he would have the same opportunities as they had, although the regent’s son, Justice, four years his senior, unlike Mandela was destined to be a chief.

Mandela attended a small school next to the palace, studying English, isiXhosa, history and geography. He was introduced to a part of the Transkei where the impact of the missionaries had been substantial, for Mqhekezweni was a mission station of the Methodist Church and far more ‘up-to-date and Westernised than Qunu’ (Mandela, 1994: 17).

Mandela remarks that the two principles that governed his life at Mqhekezweni were chieftaincy and the Church. Mandela saw the role of the Church in a very positive light, an institution being

as concerned with this world as the next: I saw that virtually all of the achievements of Africans seemed to come about through the missionary work of the Church. The mission schools trained the clerks, the interpreters and the policemen, who at the time represented the height of African aspirations.

Interestingly, this was the very location that had earlier seen a Thembu breakaway church led by Nehemiah Tile, objecting to white dominance of the church and their undermining of the chieftaincy (Saunders, 1970). This was part of the broader independent African church movement loosely referred to as ‘Ethiopianism’, seen as one of the precursors of African nationalism (Campbell, 1998). There is no mention in Mandela’s accounts of his life, nor in any other accounts, of Tile, even though, as with other independent churches, the movement was likely to have had followers, its heyday having been not very long before Mandela’s arrival in the 1880s (personal communication, Professor Jeff Peires, 23 October 2013 by email).

In Qunu, Mandela had only attended church on the day of his baptism and religion was a ritual he had ‘indulged in for my mother’s sake and to which I attached no meaning’. At Mqhekezweni, in contrast, religion was part of the fabric of life and he attended church each Sunday along with the regent and his wife. The regent took his religion very seriously, and the only time that Mandela was punished was when he missed a church service (Mandela, 1994: 19). In this, and other ways, Mandela’s conduct was conditioned by the expectations of the regent. He placed great value on this and his life’s trajectory was determined by his status. For this reason, it would initially have been unthinkable to go against the wishes of the regent. In many respects, Mandela lacked personal agency, insofar as he understood his life to be conducted according to the wishes of the regent, who guided his destiny, a destiny that had been decided by his lineage.

Initiation: unresolved transition to manhood

In Mandela’s discourse there is continual reference to being a man or doing what a man ought to do or becoming a man or signifying that some or other item is given to him as a sign of manhood (see, for example, Mandela, 1994: 24–29, 30, 40,178; Sampson, 1999: 3, 196). Later in life, he reproaches himself for not being there to protect his family, as a (male) head of household should be (Sampson, 1999: 410). Mandela grows up in an environment where he is en route to becoming a man, and in boyhood the content of that manhood is performed and prefigured by the way that he and his childhood friends interact with one another, their seclusion as boys, pursuing distinct pastimes as boys and the dominant masculinist ideas of what was considered right for a boy to do (Mandela, 1994: 8–11).

On a less formal level, he undertakes substantial physical and social journeys that entail major changes in his life, before a more ritualised change entailed in initiation, though one can argue that the process of transition to manhood started at birth as a boy child and passed through various mutations. Boy children are often addressed in words that suggest that they are in the process of becoming a man and in the course of growing up – his childhood friends are mainly boys who play games for boys, often war games that reinforce a distinct type of masculine character and path in life:

From an early age, I spent most of my free time in the veld playing and fighting with the other boys of the village. A boy who remained at home tied to his mother’s apron strings was regarded as a sissy. At night I shared my food and blanket with these same boys. I was no more than five when I became a herd-boy looking after sheep and calves in the fields. …It was in the fields that I learned how to knock birds out of the sky with a slingshot, to gather wild honey and fruits and edible roots, to drink warm, sweet milk straight from the udder of a cow, to swim in the clear, cold streams, and to catch fish with twine and sharpened bits of wire. I learned to stick-fight-essential knowledge to any rural African boy-and became adept at its various techniques, parrying blows, feinting in one direction and striking in another, breaking away from an opponent with quick footwork….

Even if one accepts that initiation is a process, the moment of circumcision is a decisive event. When he was sixteen, Mandela says, the regent decided that it was time that ‘I became a man’. Mandela says that in ‘Xhosa tradition’, ‘this is achieved through one means only: circumcision…’. But in the same paragraph he immediately qualifies this, indicating the wider social meanings and processes entailed in attaining manhood, saying ‘it is not just a surgical procedure, but a lengthy and elaborate ritual in preparation for manhood.…’ (Mandela, 1994: 24).

This distinction is important because it also raises the question of whether the transition to manhood comprises a rupture or a process that may even begin at birth, with there being specific ways of addressing and relating to boy children connoting that they are in the process of becoming men. The transition to manhood may continue over some time without there being a single and immediate site or moment of rupture entailing becoming a man.

What is comprised in being a man is not uniform, for it may vary in differing contexts, most obviously in time of peace and war. The after-effects of war and dispossession, we will see, also had an effect on the way in which manhood was conceived. The loss of independence may in some ways have reinforced a sense of loss of, and determination to, recover a warrior tradition of manhood. While defeated, the conception of manhood often remained militarised, performed through various acts of bravery required of initiates and circumcision taking place in risky conditions, often in the most climatically hazardous period of the year, the winter months. This conception of warrior manhood was part of a people who could no longer be or were no longer men according to some of their self-conceptions, but were longing to be men who could decide their own future and protect their land and their kin.

Mandela is circumcised along with others of his age group, although they were brought together primarily for the initiation of the older youth, Justice. At the end of the period of seclusion of the initiates, a ‘great ceremony’ was held to welcome them ‘as men’ in society. Families, friends and local chiefs gathered ‘for speeches, songs and gift-giving…’ (Mandela, 1994: 27).

However, for Mandela, the way the process unfolds disrupts the idea that predominated amongst those present, of his ‘becoming a man’ on that day. This is through what the main speaker of the day, Chief Meligqili, the son of Dalindyebo (d. 1920), says, pointing to the ambiguity of manifesting adulthood in conditions of subjugation. The chief speaks of warriors who have been defeated, but is also aware of other routes in life where Africans are unable to realise their potential:

[A]fter listening to him, my gaily coloured dreams suddenly darkened. He began conventionally, remarking how fine it was that we were continuing a tradition that had been going on for as long as anyone could remember. Then he turned to us and his tone suddenly changed. ‘There sit our sons,’ he said, ‘young, healthy and handsome, the flower of the Xhosa tribe, the pride of our nation. We have just circumcised them in a ritual that promises them manhood, but I am here to tell you that it is an empty, illusory promise, a promise that can never be fulfilled. For we Xhosas, and all black South Africans, are a conquered people. We are slaves in our own country. We are tenants on our own soil. We have no strength, no power, no control over our own destiny in the land of our birth. They will go to cities where they will live in shacks and drink cheap alcohol, all because we have no land to give them where they could prosper and multiply. They will cough their lungs out deep in the bowels of the white man’s mines, destroying their health, never seeing the sun, so that the white man can live a life of unequalled prosperity. Among these young men are chiefs who will never rule because we have no power to govern ourselves; soldiers who will never fight for we have no weapons to fight with; scholars who will never teach because we have no place for them to study. The abilities, the intelligence, the promise of these young men will be squandered in their attempt to eke out a living doing the simplest, most mindless chores for the white man. These gifts today are naught, for we cannot give them the greatest gift of all, which is freedom and independence.

Mandela and the audience did not welcome these words. The audience had become quiet and Mandela thought angry, for they did not want to hear what Chief Meligqili said.

I know that I myself did not want to hear them. I was cross rather than aroused by the chief’s remarks, dismissing his words as the abusive comments of an ignorant man who was unable to appreciate the value of the education and benefits that the white man had brought to our country. At the time, I looked on the white man not as an oppressor but as a benefactor, and I thought the chief was enormously ungrateful. This upstart chief was ruining my day, spoiling the proud feeling with wrong-headed remarks.

But without exactly understanding why, his words soon began to work on me. He had sown a seed, and though I let that seed lie dormant for a long season, it eventually began to grow. Later I realized that the ignorant man that day was not the chief but myself.

After the ceremony, Mandela breaches taboo by returning to the lodges where initiates had been secluded. He sees the moment as signifying a turning point, even if it were not transforming him into a man:

…I walked back to the river and watched it meander on the way to where, many miles distant, it emptied into the Indian Ocean. I had never crossed that river, and I knew little or nothing of the world beyond it, a world that beckoned me that day. It was almost sunset and I hurried on to where our seclusion lodges had been. Though it was forbidden to look back while the lodges were burning, I could not resist. When I reached the area, all that remained were two pyramids of ashes by a large mimosa tree. In these ash heaps lay a lost and delightful world, the world of my childhood, the world of sweet and irresponsible days at Qunu and Mqhekezweni. Now I was a man, and I would never again play thinti ⁵ or steal maize, or drink milk from a cow’s udder. I was already in mourning for my own youth. Looking back, I know that I was not a man that day and would not truly become one for many years.

Mandela’s recollection of his incomplete or unresolved transition to manhood is significant, for Chief Meligqili’s speech points to a wider discourse of African nationalist men that Mandela came to know, which often used the imagery of a people who had been emasculated and expressed the need to recover their virility (Erlank, 2003; Suttner, 2008: 106-112), as a prelude to becoming a nation, that he would later encounter when he becomes part of the ANC Youth League. ⁶

In this speech, the Chief addressed what no initiation ceremony could remedy, that the African people were treated, spoken of and lived as a ‘child race’. This was found in the earlier discourse of the missionaries and is what Leon de Kock refers to as the ‘infant metaphor’ (de Kock, 1996: 88–90). White rulers dominated them, whether through the language of paternalism, trusteeship or baasskap (boss-ship, overlording). The proud warriors of the past were now treated as ‘boys’ and their womenfolk were referred to as ‘girls’. Thus, General JBM Hertzog, in a speech of 1926, remarked:

Next to the European, the Native stands as an 8-year old child to a man of great experience-a child in religion, a child in moral conviction; without art and without science; the most primitive needs, and the most elementary knowledge to provide for those needs. If ever a race had a need of guidance and protection from another people with which it is placed in contact, then it is the Native in his contact with the white man.

In this discourse, subjugation of the African is in line with infantilisation and the denial of adulthood. The attainment of manhood was closely intertwined with the achievement of freedom and self-determination as a people. For, if the African people were not free, various qualities attributed to manhood, including providing protection and defending the home, could not be realised. Interestingly, some of these areas of disempowerment preoccupy Mandela as an absent father and husband, when imprisoned.

If this understanding of African manhood is correct, as being linked to removing the yoke of white overlordship, then the complicated rites of passage in Mandela’s road to manhood must be seen as intimately tied to the growth of his awareness of white domination and the steps he takes to remove this. Indeed, Mandela returns to the theme of becoming a man after being volunteer-in-chief in the Defiance Campaign of 1952, where he believes he had acquitted himself well and that the ‘enemy’ had felt his punches. He could walk ‘upright like a man’ (Mandela, 1994: 130).

Clarkebury

Throughout Mandela’s early life, until after he arrives in Johannesburg, he is very conscious of what he is destined to be, not what he considered as existentially desirable or undesirable for himself or in a human being more generally. Because he was ‘destined’ to become a counsellor to Sabata, the regent had often told Mandela that it was not for him ‘to spend your life mining the white man’s gold, never knowing how to write your name’. Shortly after the initiation ceremony, he crossed the Mbashe River for the first time, driven by the regent, to attend Clarkebury Boarding Institute in the district of Engcobo.

Before leaving, [the regent] had organised a celebration for my having passed Standard V and being admitted to Clarkebury. A sheep was slaughtered and there was dancing and singing-it was the first celebration that I had ever had in my own honour, and I greatly enjoyed it.

Again his status as a man is re-emphasised when the regent gave ‘me my first pair of boots, a sign of manhood, and that night I polished them anew, even though they were already shiny’ (Mandela, 1994: 30).

On the way to the school, the regent communicated to Mandela how he should conduct himself at Clarkebury, and in relation to the Reverend C Harris, the governor of the school. According to the regent, Harris was unique,

he was a white Thembu, a white man who in his heart loved and understood the Thembu people. The regent said when Sabata was older, he would entrust the future king to Reverend Harris, who would train him as both a Christian and a traditional ruler. He said that I must learn from Reverend Harris because I was destined to guide the leader that Reverend Harris was to mould.

The emergence of Mandela as a leader in his own right was a notion that did not arise and was not even contemplated, for his role was to prepare another for leadership, deriving from his place in the hierarchies of Thembu royalty. Sampson is quite wrong when he repeatedly refers to Mandela as having been a chief (Sampson, 1999: for example, 213, 436, 502). Mandela himself explains:

Although I was a member of the royal household, I was not among the privileged few who were trained for rule. Instead, as a descendant of the Ixhiba house, ⁷ I was groomed, like my father before me, to counsel the rulers of the tribe.

The regent, probably by virtue of his standing, does not appear from Mandela’s account to have suffered any sense of inferiority in relation to the whites he met. Mandela reflects on what he had seen of the regent’s relationship with whites, men of ‘high standing’. The regent received them ‘courteously, but not obsequiously; he treated them on equal terms as they did him. At times, I even saw him upbraid them, though this was extremely rare’. At the same time, being a Christian, he recognised a realm where he accepted the authority of the clergy (Mandela, 1994: 31).

When they arrived, they were taken in to Reverend Harris’s study, ‘where the regent introduced me and I stood to shake his hand, the first time I had ever shaken hands with a white man’. The regent asked Harris to take a special interest in Mandela because he was being prepared as a future counsellor. With regard to Reverend Harris, the regent advised Mandela on how he should behave, affording the reverend the same respect and obedience that he gave to the regent (Mandela, 1994: 31). In other words, there was no doubt about the status the regent enjoyed in relation to the reverend. It had to be impressed upon Mandela that similar respect was owed to Reverend Harris. This is one, amongst many, indications of why Mandela did not have reason, in his period under the regent, to hold all whites in awe, given the status that the regent enjoyed.

Mandela encountered, in Clarkebury, colonial-style buildings far grander than Mqhekezweni. This was the first time he was to live in a Western, non-African environment, a world whose rules were ‘not yet clear to me’ (Mandela, 1994: 31).

Mandela understood his life to be governed by his lineage, what he owed in respect to people like the regent, what was expected of him and the respect owed to him by virtue of his own position. But Clarkebury was not run on this basis.

No one knew or even cared that I was a descendant of the illustrious [Thembu king] Ngubengcuka…. At Clarkebury, plenty of the boys had distinguished lineages, and I was no longer unique….I quickly realised that I had to make my way on the basis of my ability, not my heritage. Most of my classmates could outrun me on the playing field and outthink me in the classroom and I had a good deal of catching up to do.

In one of the schoolteachers, Ben Mahlasela, Mandela witnessed a black person (apart from the possibly special conditions attaching to the status of the regent) who asserted equality with whites. Despite his qualities, Rev Harris evoked fear in the other staff. Mahlasela ‘was not intimidated by Reverend Harris. Even the white faculty behaved in a servile manner to Reverend Harris, but Mr Mahlasela…. met the reverend on equal terms, disagreeing with him where others simply assented’ (Mandela, 1994: 33).

Mandela’s period in Clarkebury opened him up to a wider range of people, meeting students not only from other parts of the Transkei, but from Johannesburg and Basutoland (now Lesotho), some of whom were much more sophisticated and less provincial than he was. In some ways, he emulated them but he did not envy them. Despite his attempts to meet the criteria for excellence at Clarkebury, he remained psychologically and socially located in a manner that displaced individual agency, for Mandela’s life had been preordained:

I never thought it possible for a boy from the countryside to rival them in their worldliness. Yet I did not envy them. Even as I left Clarkebury, I was still, at heart, a Thembu, and I was proud to think and act like one. My roots were my destiny, and I believed that I would become a counsellor to the Thembu king, as my guardian wanted. My horizons did not extend beyond Thembuland and I believed that to be a Thembu was the most enviable thing in the world.

Healdtown

In 1937, aged nineteen, Mandela joined Justice at Healdtown, in Fort Beaufort, about 175 miles away from Umtata. Like Clarkebury, Healdtown was a Methodist mission school and provided a ‘Christian and liberal arts education based on an English model’ (Mandela, 1994: 35).

The principal, Dr Arthur Wellington, claimed to be a descendant of the Duke of Wellington, who had saved civilization ‘for Europe and you, the natives’. Mandela joined others in applauding, ‘each of us profoundly grateful that a descendant of the great Duke of Wellington would take the trouble to educate natives such as ourselves’.

His pride in being a Thembu was not seen to be incompatible with aspiring to British subjectivity, an aspiration that was common to the early bearers of African political thinking in the Cape and even later in the ANC (Suttner, 2014: 125, 129–132). The ‘educated Englishman was our model; what we aspired to be were “black Englishmen”, as we were sometimes derisively called. We were taught –and believed-that the best ideas were English ideas, the best government was English government and the best men were Englishmen’ (Mandela, 1994: 35–36).

At Healdtown Mandela started to develop a cautious sense that he was part of something wider than the Thembu people, an African consciousness. There were students from all over the country and the former protectorates. Though mostly Xhosa speakers, there were students from different ethnic groups. But each group would gravitate to their own.

Even the members of various Xhosa tribes would gravitate together, such as the amaMpondo with the amaMpondo, and so on. I adhered to this same pattern, but it was at Healdtown that I made my first Sotho-speaking friend, Zachariah Molete. I remember feeling quite bold at having a friend who was not a Xhosa.

Again, as at Clarkebury, Mandela witnessed an African teacher stand up to white authority, in this case Dr Wellington himself. After an incident… the housemaster, Reverend SS Mokitimi, was called in to make peace. But Dr Wellington arrived and

pulled himself to a great height and demanded to know what was going on. Reverend Mokitimi, the top of whose head did not even reach Dr Wellington’s shoulders, said very respectfully, ‘Dr Wellington, everything is under control and I will report to you tomorrow.’

Dr Wellington insisted on knowing what was going on, but Mokitimi stood his ground, saying, ‘Dr Wellington, I am the housemaster and I have told you that I will report to you tomorrow, and that is what I will do.’ While the students expected an explosion, Dr Wellington simply said, ‘Very well’, and left. Mandela ‘realized then that Dr Wellington was less than a god and Reverend Mokitimi was more than a lackey, and that a black man did not have to defer automatically to a white, however senior he was’ (Mandela, 1994: 36–7).

A visit of the famous Xhosa poet, SEK Mqhayi, to the school electrified Mandela, but also created a sense of unease. On the one hand, Mqhayi, in front of the whole school, castigated imperialism and predicted that one day ‘the forces of African society will achieve a momentous victory over the interloper. For too long we have succumbed to the false gods of the white man. But we shall emerge and cast off these foreign notions’ (Mandela, 1994: 39).

But in reciting his well-known poem in which he apportions stars in the heavens to the various nations of the world, Mqhayi had both an anti-imperialist and a Xhosa chauvinist message. ⁸ He says to the people of Europe, ‘I give you the Milky way, the largest constellation, for you are a strange people, full of greed and envy, who quarrel over plenty’. Mandela recalls, ‘He then discussed Africa and separated the continent into different nations, giving specific constellations to different tribes. He had been dancing about the stage, waving his spear, modulating his voice, and now, suddenly, he became still and lowered his voice’.

‘Now, come you, O House of Xhosa,’ he said, and slowly began to lower himself so that he was on one knee. ‘I give unto you the most important and transcendant star, the Morning Star, for you are a proud and a powerful people. It is the star for counting the years-the years of manhood.’ When he spoke this last word, he dropped his head to his chest. We rose to our feet, clapping and cheering. I did not want ever to stop applauding. I felt such intense pride at that point, not as an African, but as a Xhosa; I felt like one of the chosen people.

Mandela was astonished at this boldness in speaking of such ‘delicate matters’ in front of Dr Wellington and other whites. It also altered his perception of a man like Dr Wellington as being cast as his benefactor.

I was galvanised, but also confused by Mqhayi’s performance. He had moved from a more nationalistic, all-encompassing theme of African unity to a more parochial one addressed to the Xhosa people, of whom he was one. As my time at Healdtown was coming to an end, I had many new and sometimes conflicting ideas floating in my head. I was beginning to see that Africans of all tribes had much in common, yet here was the great Mqhayi praising the Xhosa above all else; I saw that an African might stand his ground with a white man, yet I was still eagerly seeking benefits from whites, which often required subservience. In a sense Mqhayi’s shift in focus was a mirror of my own mind because I went back and forth between pride in myself as a Xhosa and a feeling of kinship with other Africans. But as I left Healdtown at the end of the year, I saw myself as a Xhosa first and an African second.

We see here that Mandela identifies himself as Xhosa, when he is strictly speaking Thembu. Mqhayi, in contrast, derived originally from Thembu stock, though his forbears were absorbed into the Rharhabe kingdom of the Xhosa under Ngqika and thus became Xhosa proper (Opland, 2009: 3).

Fort Hare

Mandela was at Fort Hare at a crucial time in its history as an institution hosting many future leaders, with famous African scholars on its staff, like Professors DDT Jabavu and ZK Matthews. He was exposed to political views, emanating from the ANC, for the first time. But Mandela did not become politicised or try to join the ANC.

In his second year at Fort Hare, he had invited Paul Mahabane, son of the former ANC president, Rev Zaccheus Mahabane to spend the winter holidays in the Transkei.

One day during the holiday, Paul and I went to Umtata, the capital of the Transkei….We were standing outside the post office when the local magistrate, a white man in his sixties, approached Paul and asked him to go inside to buy him some postage stamps. It was quite common for any white person to call on any black person to perform a chore. The magistrate attempted to hand Paul some change, but Paul would not take it. The magistrate was offended. ‘Do you know who I am?’ he said, his face turning red with irritation. ‘It is not necessary to know who you are,’ Mahabane said. ‘I know what you are.’ The magistrate asked him exactly what he meant by that. ‘I mean that you are a rogue!’ Paul said heatedly. The magistrate boiled over and exclaimed, ‘You’ll pay dearly for this!’ and then walked away.

Mandela examines his own response:

I was extremely uncomfortable with Paul’s behaviour. While I respected his courage, I also found it disturbing. The magistrate knew precisely who I was and I knew that if he had asked me rather than Paul, I would have simply performed the errand and forgotten about it. But I admired Paul for what he had done, even though I was not yet ready to do the same myself. I was beginning to realise that a black man did not have to accept the dozens of petty indignities directed at him each day.

It seems unlikely that Mandela’s unwillingness to follow Mahabane’s example could be put down to simple cowardice. It seems that what was at work here was his continued sense of duty to the regent and the need to act out patterns of behaviour and respect, which he may have understood to be what the regent expected of him. This impression is confirmed in a statement found in the prison memoir, but not the autobiography. ‘With my background I was a bit uncomfortable…’ (Mandela, 1975: 39).

Mandela’s period at Fort Hare ends with his imminent expulsion over a boycott of SRC elections, unrelated to broad political questions. The regent intended to send him back and have him accept the conditions that the principal had set. But other factors intervened. The regent, as was customary at the time, announced to Mandela and his son, Justice, that he had arranged marriages for them. Both Justice and Mandela were unhappy about this and resolved to flee to Johannesburg, although Mandela later reproaches himself for not seeking other avenues, to mediate an agreement with the regent (Mandela, 1994: 51–2). One may ask whether Mandela would have acted that way had he been alone, whether the breach of fealty was partially legitimated by his companion being Justice.

With some difficulty, they make their way to Johannesburg and Mandela is dazzled by what he sees. Mandela describes his arrival within the metaphor of a continuing journey: ‘I had reached the end of what seemed like a long journey, but it was actually the very beginning of a much longer and more trying journey that would test me in ways that I could not then have imagined’ (Mandela, 1994: 56).

Conclusion

This paper has sought to demonstrate how Mandela’s early life left little room for personal agency and leadership. Mandela saw himself as destined to be counsellor to the future Thembu king, Sabata Dalindyebo. Much that he does and does not do is governed by expectations related to this role. Before he leaves for Johannesburg he is not politicised and either he does not recognise or does not act against oppression. An important feature of the period is the unresolved nature of his transition to manhood. He is initiated into warrior-type masculinity. But this is when Africans were a conquered people and actually acquiring manhood is seen as tied to recovering freedom. It is only when he confronts the apartheid regime in the 1952 Defiance campaign, that Mandela sees himself as having realised his manhood. ⁹