I stayed at that house for about a year, and in the end, I uttered nothing about my feelings. Didi did not show any less interest in her boyfriend or any more interest in me. I bade her good-bye with expressions of gratitude for her friendliness and the hospitality of the family. I did not see Didi again for many years. One day, much later, when I was practicing law in Johannesburg, a young woman and her mother walked into my office. The woman had had a child, and her boyfriend did not want to marry her; she was seeking to institute an action against him. That young woman was Didi, only now she looked haggard and wore a faded dress. I was distressed to see her, and thought how things might have turned out differently. In the end, she did not bring a suit against her boyfriend, and I never saw her again.
Despite my romantic deficiencies, I gradually adjusted to township life, and began to develop a sense of inner strength, a belief that I could do well outside the world in which I had grown up. I slowly discovered I did not have to depend on my royal connections or the support of family in order to advance, and I forged relationships with people who did not know or care about my link to the Thembu royal house. I had my own home, humble though it was, and I was developing the confidence and self-reliance necessary to stand on my own two feet.
At the end of 1941, I received word that the regent was visiting Johannesburg and wanted to see me. I was nervous, but knew that I was obligated to see him, and indeed wanted to do so. He was staying at the WNLA compound, the headquarters of the Witwatersrand Native Labor Association, the recruiting agency for mine-workers along the Reef.
The regent seemed greatly changed, or perhaps it was I who had changed. He never once mentioned the fact that I had run away, Fort Hare, or the arranged marriage that was not to be. He was courteous and solicitous, questioning me in a fatherly way about my studies and future plans. He recognized that my life was starting in earnest and would take a different course from the one he had envisaged and planned for. He did not try to dissuade me from my course, and I was grateful for this implicit acknowledgment that I was no longer his charge.
My meeting with the regent had a double effect. I had rehabilitated myself and at the same time restored my own regard for him and the Thembu royal house. I had become indifferent to my old connections, an attitude I had adopted in part to justify my flight and somehow alleviate the pain of my separation from a world I loved and valued. It was reassuring to be back in the regent’s warm embrace.
While the regent seemed satisfied with me, he was vexed with Justice, who he said must return to Mqhekezweni. Justice had formed a liaison with a young woman, and I knew he had no intention of going home. After the regent departed, Bangindawo, one of his headmen, instituted proceedings against Justice, and I agreed to help Justice when he was called before the native commissioner. At the hearing, I pointed out that Justice was an adult, and was not obligated to return to Mqhekezweni merely because his father ordered it. When Bangindawo spoke, he did not reply to my argument but played on my own loyalties. He addressed me as Madiba, my clan name, something that was well calculated to remind me of my Thembu heritage. “Madiba,” he said, “the regent has cared for you, educated you, and treated you like his own son. Now you want to keep his true son from him. This is contrary to the wishes of the man who has been your faithful guardian, and contrary to the path that has been laid out for Justice.”
Bangindawo’s speech hit me hard. Justice did have a different destiny from that of myself. He was the son of a chief, and a future chief in his own right. After the hearing, I told Justice that I had changed my mind, and that I thought he should return. Justice was mystified by my reaction and refused to listen to me. He resolved to stay and must have informed his girlfriend of my advice, for she never thereafter spoke to me.
At the beginning of 1942, in order to save money and be closer to downtown Johannesburg, I moved from the room at the back of the Xhomas’ to the WNLA compound. I was assisted by Mr. Festile, the induna at the Chamber of Mines, who was once again playing a fateful role in my life. On his own initiative he had decided to offer me free accommodation in the mining compound.
The WNLA compound was a multiethnic, polyglot community of modern, urban South Africa. There were Sothos, Tswanas, Vendas, Zulus, Pedis, Shangaans, Namibians, Mozambicans, Swazis, and Xhosas. Few spoke English, and the lingua franca was an amalgam of many tongues known as Fanagalo. There, I saw not only flare-ups of ethnic animosity, but the comity that was also possible among men of different backgrounds. Yet I was a fish out of water there. Instead of spending my days underground, I was studying or working in a law office where the only physical activity was running errands or putting files in a cabinet.
Because the WNLA was a way station for visiting chiefs, I had the privilege of meeting tribal leaders from all over southern Africa. I recall on one occasion meeting the queen regent of Basutoland, or what is now Lesotho, Mantsebo Moshweshwe. She was accompanied by two chiefs, both of whom knew Sabata’s father, Jongilizwe. I asked them about Jongilizwe, and for an hour I seemed to be back in Thembuland as they told colorful tales about his early years.
The queen took special notice of me and at one point addressed me directly, but she spoke in Sesotho, a language in which I knew few words. Sesotho is the language of the Sotho people as well as the Tswana, a large number of whom live in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. She looked at me with incredulity, and then said in English, “What kind of lawyer and leader will you be who cannot speak the language of your own people?” I had no response. The question embarrassed and sobered me; it made me realize my parochialism and just how unprepared I was for the task of serving my people. I had unconsciously succumbed to the ethnic divisions fostered by the white government and I did not know how to speak to my own kith and kin. Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs. I again realized that we were not different people with separate languages; we were one people, with different tongues.
Less than six months after the regent’s visit, Justice and I learned of his father’s death in the winter of 1942. He had seemed weary when last I saw him, and his death did not come as a great surprise. We read of the regent’s death in the newspaper because the telegram that had been sent to Justice had gone astray. We hastened down to the Transkei, arriving the day after the regent’s funeral.
Though I was disappointed to miss the regent’s burial, I was inwardly glad that I had reconciled with him before his death. But I was not without stabs of guilt. I always knew, even when I was estranged from the regent, that all my friends might desert me, all my plans might founder, all my hopes be dashed, but the regent would never abandon me. Yet I had spurned him, and I wondered whether my desertion might have hastened his death.
The passing of the regent removed from the scene an enlightened and tolerant man who achieved the goal that marks the reign of all great leaders: he kept his people united. Liberals and conservatives, traditionalists and reformers, white-collar officials and blue-collar miners, all remained loyal to him, not because they always agreed with him, but because the regent listened to and respected all different opinions.
I spent nearly a week in Mqhekezweni after the funeral and it was a time of retrospection and rediscovery. There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. The Great Place went on as before, no different from when I had grown up there. But I realized that my own outlook and worldviews had evolved. I was no longer attracted by a career in the civil service, or being an interpreter in the Native Affairs Department. I no longer saw my future bound up with Thembuland and the Transkei. I was even informed that my Xhosa was no longer pure and was now influenced by Zulu, one of the dominant languages in the Reef. My life in Johannesburg, my exposure to men like Gaur Radebe, my experiences at the law firm, had radically altered my beliefs. I looked back on that young man who had left Mqhekezweni as a naive and parochial fellow who had seen very little of the world. I now believed I was seeing things as they were. That too, of course, was an illusion.