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Nelson Mandela was born Mvezo, near Umtata, on 18 July 1918.\n

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His great-grandfather was Ngubengcuka (who died in 1832) king of the Thembu people. His father was chief of the town Mvezo, but had a row with one the Colonial governors and the family was moved to Qunu. He had four sons, of which Nelson Mandela was one, and seven daughters. He died of TB when Nelson was nine.\n

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He was named Rolihlahla, which means Trouble Maker. He was the first of his family to attend school, where his English teacher gave him the name Nelson. He went to a Wesleyan mission school. At sixteen he was \"initiated\", at which point he was moved to Clarkebury Boarding Institute. He completed his Junior Certificate in two years, instead of the normal three years, and moved to Healdtown, the Wesleyan college in Fort Beaufort which most Thembu royalty attended. \n

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In 1938, At the age of 19, Mandela enrolled to Fort Hare University, to study for a Bachelor of Arts qualification, which is where he met Oliver Tambo. He also met Kaiser (\"K.D.\") Matanzima who was in line for the Transkei throne. This lineage encouraged KD to embrace the Apartheid policy of restricted land availability to blacks through a system of Bantustans (homelands), which put him in direct contrast to Mandela who rejected the basis.\n

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At the end of his first year at university, Mandela became active in the Students' Representative Council boycott against university policies and was expelled. Shortly afterwards, in 1939, his guardian arranged for Nelson Mandela to be married. He was sufficiently upset that he relocated to Johannesburg, working as a guard at a mine, until the owner found out that he had run away from his guardian, who was the regent of Transkei. His friend, the property agent Walter Sisulu, helped him to get articles with a law firm from where he completed his BA qualification by correspondence. He then went on to study law at University of Witwatersrand. He was now living in the township of Alexandra, north of Johannesburg.\n

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Nelson Mandela was born on 18 July 1918 in a small village in the South West of South Africa.\n

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He was of royal descent, his great-grandfather being king of the Thembu people.\n

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He was educated in a Wesleyan mission school until he was sixteen. He moved schools before starting university in 1938, studying for a Bachelor of Arts. Within a year, he took an active part in a boycott against the university's racist policies and was expelled.\n

", "sources": "", "Feedback": "", "title": "The Early Years (1919 - 1939)"}