Nelson Mandela's Early Life

The son of a Thembu chief (traditional leader), Nelson Mandela's primary influences as a young person were the customs of the Thembu people and the education he received at Christian mission schools. Between 1939 and 1941 he studied at the University of Fort Hare, a tertiary institution for black South Africans (and black students from other African countries), where he was first exposed to the politics of African nationalism. In 1941 he left the Eastern Cape for the city of Johannesburg, where he was to be exposed more directly to the realities of state racism and where he was to find a political home in the African National Congress.

The earliest known photograph of Nelson Mandela captures him as a student at Healdtown, the Wesleyan college he attended between 1937 and 1938. Seated at the center are Myrtle Workman, head of the girls’ hostel, alongside the school’s principal, the Reverend Arthur Wellington. In later years, Mandela often recalled Wellington with fond amusement, frequently breaking into laughter when recounting his schooldays and mimicking the headmaster’s grand boast: “I am a descendant of the Duke of Wellington.”

In this letter to Senator Douglas Lukhele in Swaziland, dated 1 August 1970, he reminded himself of his childhood. When Nelson Mandela began serving his life sentence on Robben Island, he was only allowed to write and receive one letter of 500 words every six months. Letters were precious – a way of communicating with the outside world and receiving any news about one’s family. It was also a way of recalling one’s life up to that moment and recording one’s thoughts. A kind of meditation – when one never knew whether the letter would safely reach the intended recipient.

In 1941, Mandela and his cousin Justice arrived at Johannesburg's Crown Mines. At the gates, Mandela asked an acquaintance from home named Bikitsha to carry his suitcase. A security search uncovered a loaded revolver that Mandela's father left him, wrapped inside his clothes. Decades later, while browsing a Johannesburg bookshop, South African historian Professor Charles van Onselen found a copy of Eddie Roux’s then-banned Time Longer Than Rope. When he opened it, a photograph slipped out showing two young men - one instantly recognisable as Nelson Mandela, then imprisoned on Robben Island. Mandela later confirmed the other man was indeed Bikitsha, of the infamous hidden gun saga.

Perhaps one of the most defining moments in Nelson Mandela’s life was the death of his father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa. It meant leaving his beloved mother to be raised by the Regent, Jongintaba Dalindyebo, as his own son. Life at the Great Place at Mqhekezweni alongside the Regent and his son Justice brought privilege and opportunity—access to the finest schools, university, and the chance to observe the Regent lead by listening to community grievances before speaking. These experiences profoundly shaped the man Mandela would become; fittingly, he opened his unpublished autobiographical manuscript with his father’s death.

While he was born in the Eastern Cape village of Mvezo, the only son of his father’s third wife, Nelson Mandela spend most of his early childhood in Qunu and later moved to Mqhekezweni after his father died. He has always enjoyed returning to Qunu where he built a house after his release from prison in 1990. Uppermost in his mind as a free man was to visit Qunu where his parents were laid to rest. His mother Nosekeni had died in her Seventies in 1968 when her son was imprisoned on Robben Island. As soon as he could, he visited her grave and that of his father Nkosi (Chief) Mphakanyiswa who had died when he was a boy.