I was again leaving home, but I was eager to see how I would fare in the wider world. The regent himself drove me to Engcobo in his majestic Ford V8. Before leaving, he had organized a celebration for my having passed Standard V and been 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 honor, and I greatly enjoyed it. 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.
* * *
Founded in 1825, Clarkebury Institute was located on the site of one of the oldest Wesleyan missions in the Transkei. At the time, Clarkebury was the highest institution of learning for Africans in Thembuland. The regent himself had attended Clarkebury, and Justice had followed him there. It was both a secondary school and a teacher training college, but it also offered courses in more practical disciplines, such as carpentry, tailoring, and tinsmithing.
During the trip, the regent advised me on my behavior and my future. He urged me to behave in a way that brought only respect to Sabata and to himself, and I assured him that I would. He then briefed me on the Reverend C. Harris, the governor of the school. Reverend Harris, he explained, 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 mold.
At Mqhekezweni I had met many white traders and government officials, including magistrates and police officers. These were men of high standing and 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. I had very little experience in dealing directly with whites. The regent never told me how to behave, and I observed him and followed his example. In talking about Reverend Harris, however, the regent, for the first time, gave me a lecture on how I was to conduct myself. He said I must afford the reverend the same respect and obedience that I gave to him.
Clarkebury was far grander even than Mqhekezweni. The school itself consisted of a cluster of two dozen or so graceful, colonial-style buildings, which included individual homes as well as dormitories, the library, and various instructional halls. It was the first place I’d lived that was Western, not African, and I felt I was entering a new world whose rules were not yet clear to me.
We 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. Reverend Harris was warm and friendly, and treated the regent with great deference. The regent explained that I was being groomed to be a counselor to the king and that he hoped the reverend would take a special interest in me. The reverend nodded, adding that Clarkebury students were required to do manual labor after school hours, and he would arrange for me to work in his garden.
At the end of the interview, the regent bade me good-bye and handed me a pound note for pocket money, the largest amount of money I had ever possessed. I bade him farewell and promised that I would not disappoint him.
Clarkebury was a Thembu college, founded on land given by the great Thembu king Ngubengcuka; as a descendant of Ngubengcuka, I presumed that I would be accorded the same deference at Clarkebury that I had come to expect in Mqhekezweni. But I was painfully mistaken, for I was treated no differently than everyone else. No one knew or even cared that I was a descendant of the illustrious Ngubengcuka. The boarding master received me without a blowing of trumpets and my fellow students did not bow and scrape before me. At Clarkebury, plenty of the boys had distinguished lineages, and I was no longer unique. This was an important lesson, for I suspect I was a bit stuck up in those days. I quickly realized 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.
Classes commenced the following morning, and along with my fellow students I climbed the steps to the first floor where the classrooms were located. The room itself had a beautifully polished wooden floor. On this first day of classes I was clad in my new boots. I had never worn boots before of any kind, and that first day, I walked like a newly shod horse. I made a terrible racket walking up the steps and almost slipped several times. As I clomped into the classroom, my boots crashing on that shiny wooden floor, I noticed two female students in the first row were watching my lame performance with great amusement. The prettier of the two leaned over to her friend and said loud enough for all to hear: “The country boy is not used to wearing shoes,” at which her friend laughed. I was blind with fury and embarrassment.
Her name was Mathona and she was a bit of a smart aleck. That day I vowed never to talk to her. But as my mortification wore off (and I became more adept at walking with boots) I also got to know her, and she was to become my greatest friend at Clarkebury. She was my first true female friend, a woman I met on equal terms with whom I could confide and share secrets. In many ways, she was the model for all my subsequent friendships with women, for with women I found I could let my hair down and confess to weaknesses and fears I would never reveal to another man.
I soon adapted myself to the life at Clarkebury. I participated in sports and games as often as I could, but my performances were no more than mediocre. I played for the love of sport, not the glory, for I received none. We played lawn tennis with homemade wooden rackets and soccer with bare feet on a field of dust.
For the first time, I was taught by teachers who had themselves been properly educated. Several of them held university degrees, which was extremely rare. One day, I was studying with Mathona, and I confided to her my fear that I might not pass my exams in English and history at the end of the year. She told me not to worry because our teacher, Gertrude Ntlabathi, was the first African woman to obtain a B.A. “She is too clever to let us fail,” Mathona said. I had not yet learned to feign knowledge that I did not possess, and as I had only a vague idea what a B.A. was, I questioned Mathona. “Oh, yes, of course,” she answered. “A B.A. is a very long and difficult book.” I did not doubt her.
Another African teacher with a bachelor of arts degree was Ben Mahlasela. We admired him not only because of his academic achievement, but because he was not intimidated by Reverend Harris. Even the white faculty behaved in a servile manner to Reverend Harris, but Mr. Mahlasela would walk into the reverend’s office without fear, and sometimes would even fail to remove his hat! He met the reverend on equal terms, disagreeing with him where others simply assented. Though I respected Reverend Harris, I admired the fact that Mr. Mahlasela would not be cowed by him. In those days, a black man with a B.A. was expected to scrape before a white man with a grade-school education. No matter how high a black man advanced, he was still considered inferior to the lowest white man.
* * *
Reverend Harris ran Clarkebury with an iron hand and an abiding sense of fairness. Clarkebury functioned more like a military school than a teacher training college. The slightest infractions were swiftly punished. In assemblies, Reverend Harris always wore a forbidding expression and was not given to levity of any kind. When he walked into a room, members of the staff, including white principals of the training and secondary schools, together with the black principal of the industrial school, rose to their feet.
Among students, he was feared more than loved. But in the garden, I saw a different Reverend Harris. Working in Reverend Harris’s garden had a double benefit: it planted in me a lifelong love of gardening and growing vegetables, and it helped me get to know the reverend and his family — the first white family with whom I had ever been on intimate terms. In that way, I saw that Reverend Harris had a public face and a private manner that were quite different from one another.
<
br /> Behind the reverend’s mask of severity was a gentle, broadminded individual who believed fervently in the importance of educating young African men. Often, I found him lost in thought in his garden. I did not disturb him and rarely talked to him, but as an example of a man unselfishly devoted to a good cause, Reverend Harris was an important model for me.
His wife was as talkative as he was taciturn. She was a lovely woman and she would often come into the garden to chat with me. I cannot for the life of me remember what we talked about, but I can still taste the delicious warm scones that she brought out to me in the afternoons.
After my slow and undistinguished start, I managed to get the hang of things, and accelerated my program, completing the junior certificate in two years instead of the usual three. I developed the reputation of having a fine memory, but in fact, I was simply a diligent worker. When I left Clarkebury, I lost track of Mathona. She was a day scholar, and her parents did not have the means to send her for further education. She was an extraordinarily clever and gifted person, whose potential was limited because of her family’s meager resources. This was an all too typical South African story. It was not lack of ability that limited my people, but lack of opportunity.
My time at Clarkebury broadened my horizons, yet I would not say that I was an entirely open-minded, unprejudiced young man when I left. I had met students from all over the Transkei, as well as a few from Johannesburg and Basutoland, as Lesotho was then known, some of whom were sophisticated and cosmopolitan in ways that made me feel provincial. Though I emulated them, 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 counselor 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.
6
IN 1937, when I was nineteen, I joined Justice at Healdtown, the Wesleyan College in Fort Beaufort, about one hundred seventy-five miles southwest of Umtata. In the nineteenth century, Fort Beaufort was one of a number of British outposts during the so-called Frontier Wars, in which a steady encroachment of white settlers systematically dispossessed the various Xhosa tribes of their land. Over a century of conflict, many Xhosa warriors achieved fame for their bravery, men like Makhanda, Sandile, and Maqoma, the last two of whom were imprisoned on Robben Island by the British authorities, where they died. By the time of my arrival at Healdtown, there were few signs of the battles of the previous century, except the main one: Fort Beaufort was a white town where once only the Xhosa lived and farmed.
Located at the end of a winding road overlooking a verdant valley, Healdtown was far more beautiful and impressive than Clarkebury. It was, at the time, the largest African school below the equator, with more than a thousand students, both male and female. Its graceful ivy-covered colonial buildings and tree-shaded courtyards gave it the feeling of a privileged academic oasis, which is precisely what it was. Like Clarkebury, Healdtown was a mission school of the Methodist Church, and provided a Christian and liberal arts education based on an English model.
The principal of Healdtown was Dr. Arthur Wellington, a stout and stuffy Englishman who boasted of his connection to the Duke of Wellington. At the outset of assemblies, Dr. Wellington would walk onstage and say, in his deep bass voice, “I am the descendant of the great Duke of Wellington, aristocrat, statesman, and general, who crushed the Frenchman Napoleon at Waterloo and thereby saved civilization for Europe — and for you, the natives.” At this, we would all enthusiastically applaud, each of us profoundly grateful that a descendant of the great Duke of Wellington would take the trouble to educate natives such as ourselves. 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.
Healdtown life was rigorous. First bell was at 6 A.M. We were in the dining hall by 6:40 for a breakfast of dry bread and hot sugar water, watched over by a somber portrait of George VI, the king of England. Those who could afford butter on their bread bought it and stored it in the kitchen. I ate dry toast. At 8 we assembled in the courtyard outside of our dormitory for “observation,” standing at attention as the girls arrived from separate dormitories. We remained in class until 12:45, and then had a lunch of samp, sour milk and beans, seldom meat. We then studied until 5 P.M., followed by an hour’s break for exercise and dinner, and then study hall from 7 until 9. Lights were out at 9:30.
Healdtown attracted students from all over the country, as well as from the protectorates of Basutoland, Swaziland, and Bechuanaland. Though it was a mostly Xhosa institution, there were also students from different tribes. After school and on weekends, students from the same tribe kept together. Even the members of various Xhosa tribes would gravitate together, such as amaMpondo with 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.
Our zoology teacher, Frank Lebentlele, was also Sotho-speaking and was very popular among the students. Personable and approachable, Frank was not much older than we and mixed freely with students. He even played on the college’s first soccer team, where he was a star performer. But what most amazed us about him was his marriage to a Xhosa girl from Umtata. Marriages between tribes were then extremely unusual. Until then, I had never known of anyone who married outside his tribe. We had been taught that such unions were taboo. But seeing Frank and his wife began to undermine my parochialism and loosen the hold of the tribalism that still imprisoned me. I began to sense my identity as an African, not just a Thembu or even a Xhosa.
Our dormitory had forty beds in it, twenty on either side of a central passageway. The housemaster was the delightful Reverend S. S. Mokitimi, who later became the first African president of the Methodist Church of South Africa. Reverend Mokitimi, who was also Sotho-speaking, was much admired among students as a modern and enlightened fellow who understood our complaints.
Reverend Mokitimi impressed us for another reason: he stood up to Dr. Wellington. One evening, a quarrel broke out between two prefects on the main thoroughfare of the college. Prefects were responsible for preventing disputes, not provoking them. Reverend Mokitimi was called in to make peace. Dr. Wellington, returning from town, suddenly appeared in the midst of this commotion, and his arrival shook us considerably. It was as if a god had descended to solve some humble problem.
Dr. Wellington 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.” Undeterred, Dr. Wellington said with some irritation, “No, I want to know what is the matter right now.” Reverend Mokitimi stood his ground: “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.” We were stunned. We had never seen anyone, much less a black man, stand up to Dr. Wellington, and we waited for an explosion. But Dr. Wellington simply said, “Very well,” and left. I realized then that Dr. Wellington was less than a god and Reverend Mokitimi more than a lackey, and that a black man did not have to defer automatically to a white, however senior he was.
Reverend Mokitimi sought to introduce reforms to the college. We all supported his efforts to improve the diet and the treatment of students, including his suggestion that students be responsible for disciplining themselves. But one change worried us, especially students from the countryside. This was Reverend Mokitimi’s innovation of having male and female students dine together in hall at Sunday lunch. I was very much against
this for the simple reason that I was still inept with knife and fork, and I did not want to embarrass myself in front of these sharp-eyed girls. But Reverend Mokitimi went ahead and organized the meals and every Sunday, I left the hall hungry and depressed.
I did, however, enjoy myself on the playing fields. The quality of sports at Healdtown was far superior to Clarkebury. In my first year, I was not skilled enough to make any of the teams. But during my second year, my friend Locke Ndzamela, Healdtown’s champion hurdler, encouraged me to take up a new sport: long-distance running. I was tall and lanky, which Locke said was the ideal build for a long-distance runner. With a few hints from him, I began training. I enjoyed the discipline and solitariness of long-distance running, which allowed me to escape from the hurly-burly of school life. At the same time, I also took up a sport that I seemed less suited for, and that was boxing. I trained in a desultory way, and only years later, when I had put on a few more pounds, did I begin to box in earnest.
During my second year at Healdtown, I was appointed a prefect by Reverend Mokitimi and Dr. Wellington. Prefects have different responsibilities, and the newest prefects have the least desirable chores. In the beginning, I supervised a group of students who worked as window cleaners during our manual work time in the afternoon, and led them to different buildings each day.
I soon graduated to the next level of responsibility, which was night duty. I have never had a problem in staying up through the night, but during one such night I was put in a moral quandary that has remained in my memory. We did not have toilets in the dormitory, but there was an outhouse about one hundred feet behind the residence. On rainy evenings, when a student woke up in the middle of the night, no one wanted to trudge through the grass and mud to the outhouse. Instead, students would stand on the veranda and urinate into the bushes. This practice, however, was strictly against regulations and one job of the prefect was to take down the names of students who indulged in it.
The Long Walk to Freedom Page 5
