Childhood Days Long Walk Original Manuscript (Image #16)

against the British. It was much later that I was carried away by the broad sweep of African history as a whole, that the deeds of all African heroes gave me an intense pride and confidence. But even then I was unable to appreciate the issues at stake and the real forces that actually shaped our history. It did not occur to me in those days that the real history of our country is not to be found only in standard text books and works of reference prescribed for our schools and universities, that it still has to be written by progressive historians who have no race prejudice and who regard all human beings as equals. I was still to learn that the history of South Africa begins not in Europe, not with the Portuguese voyages and the wrecks along our coast, and still less does it start with the landing of Jan van Riebeeck in 1652 as most Western historians claim. I would in due course find that our history starts in South Africa itself centuries before the arrival of the Khoi Khoi, the Bantu speaking people and the Whites. Equally important I would discover that South African history, like that of the world at large, was not made by monarchs and commanders, however gifted and powerful these might have been, but by the masses of the people by Abathwa, the Khoi Khoi, the Bantu speaking peoples, the simple country folks who held foreign armies at bay for more than two centuries with only their poisoned arrows and bows, knobkerries and spears. It was also at Mqhekezweni that I heard for the first time about the historical origins of the Bantu speaking people, that we came from far in the north, from a country of lakes and green plains and valleys. Mqhekezweni was also a mission of our church, the Wesleyan Church, and Reverend Matyholo