The rent of our new home was seventeen shillings and sixpence per month. The house itself was identical to hundreds of others built on postage-stamp-size plots on dirt roads. It had the same standard tin roof, the same cement floor, a narrow kitchen, and a bucket toilet in back. Although there were streetlamps outside, we used kerosene lamps inside as the homes were not yet electrified. The bedroom was so small that a double bed took up almost the entire floor space. These houses were built by the municipal authorities for workers who needed to be near town. To relieve the monotony, some people planted small gardens or painted their doors bright colors. It was the very opposite of grand, but it was my first true home of my own and I was mightily proud. A man is not a man until he has a house of his own. I did not know then that it would be the only residence that would be entirely mine for many, many years.
The state had allocated the house to Evelyn and me because we were no longer just two, but three. That year, our first son, Madiba Thembekile, was born. He was given my clan name of Madiba, but was known by the nickname Thembi. He was a solid, happy little boy who most people said resembled his mother more than his father. I had now produced an heir, though I had little as yet to bequeath to him. But I had perpetuated the Mandela name and the Madiba clan, which is one of the basic responsibilities of a Xhosa male.
I finally had a stable base, and I went from being a guest in other people’s homes to having guests in my own. My sister Leabie joined us and I took her across the railroad line to enroll her at Orlando High School. In my culture, all the members of one’s family have a claim to the hospitality of any other member of the family; the combination of my large extended family and my new house meant a great number of guests.
I enjoyed domesticity, even though I had little time for it. I delighted in playing with Thembi, bathing him and feeding him, and putting him to bed with a little story. In fact, I love playing with children and chatting with them; it has always been one of the things that make me feel most at peace. I enjoyed relaxing at home, reading quietly, taking in the sweet and savory smells emanating from pots boiling in the kitchen. But I was rarely at home to enjoy these things.
During the latter part of that year, the Reverend Michael Scott came to stay with us. Scott was an Anglican clergyman and a great fighter for African rights. He had been approached by a man named Komo, who was representing a squatter camp outside of Johannesburg that the government was seeking to relocate. Komo wanted Scott to make a protest against the removal. Scott said, “If I am going to help you I must be one of you,” and he proceeded to move to the squatter camp and start a congregation there. Scott’s shantytown for the homeless was built near a rocky knoll and the residents christened it Tobruk, after the battle in the North Africa campaign of the war. It was a place I sometimes took Thembi on Sunday morning, as he liked to play hide-and-seek among the rocks. After Scott had set up his congregation, he found that Komo was embezzling money from people who were contributing to the fight against the removal. When Scott confronted Komo, Komo drove Scott out of camp and threatened his life.
Scott took refuge with us in Orlando and brought along an African priest named Dlamini, who also had a wife and children. Our house was tiny, and Scott slept in the sitting room, Dlamini and his wife slept in another room, and we put all the children in the kitchen. Reverend Scott was a modest, unassuming man, but Dlamini was a bit hard to take. At mealtimes, he would complain about the food. “Look, here,” he would say, “this meat of yours, it’s very lean and hard, not properly cooked at all. I’m not used to meals like this.” Scott was appalled by this, and admonished Dlamini, but Dlamini took no heed. The next night he might say, “Well, this is a bit better than yesterday, but far from well prepared. Mandela, you know your wife just cannot cook.”
Dlamini indirectly caused the situation to be resolved because I was so eager to have him out of the house that I went to the squatter camp myself and explained that Scott was a true friend of theirs, unlike Komo, and that they had to choose between the two. They then organized an election in which Scott triumphed, and he moved back to the squatter camp, taking Father Dlamini with him.
Early in 1947, I completed the requisite period of three years for articles and my time at Witkin, Sidelsky and Eidelman came to an end. I resolved to become a full-time student in order to earn my LL.B. so that I could go out on my own and practice as an attorney. The loss of the eight pounds, ten shillings, and one penny per month that I earned at Sidelsky was devastating. I applied to the Bantu Welfare Trust at the South African Institute of Race Relations in Johannesburg for a loan of £250 sterling to help finance my law studies, which included university fees, textbooks, and a monthly allowance. I was given a loan of £150.
Three months later, I wrote to them again, noting that my wife was about to take maternity leave, and we would lose her salary of seventeen pounds per month, which was absolutely necessary to our survival. I did receive the additional money, for which I was grateful, but the circumstances which warranted it were unfortunate. Our daughter Makaziwe’s birth was not difficult, yet she was frail and sickly. From the start, we feared the worst. Many nights, Evelyn and I took turns looking after her. We did not know the name of whatever was consuming this tiny girl and the doctors could not explain the nature of the problem. Evelyn monitored the baby with the combination of a mother’s tirelessness and a nurse’s professional efficiency. When she was nine months old, Makaziwe passed away. Evelyn was distraught, and the only thing that helped temper my own grief was trying to alleviate hers.
In politics, no matter how much one plans, circumstances often dictate events. In July of 1947, during an informal discussion with Lembede about Youth League business, he complained to me of a sudden pain in his stomach and an accompanying chill. When the pain worsened, we drove him to Coronation Hospital, and that same night, he was dead at the age of thirty-three. Many were deeply affected by his death. Walter Sisulu seemed almost prostrate with grief. His passing was a setback to the movement, for Lembede was a fount of ideas and attracted others to the organization.
Lembede was succeeded by Peter Mda, whose analytical approach, ability to express himself clearly and simply, and tactical experience made him an excellent politician and an outstanding leader of the Youth League. Mda was a lean fellow; he had no excess weight, just as he used no excess words. In his broad-minded tolerance of different views, his own thinking was more mature than that of Lembede. It took Mda’s leadership to advance Lembede’s cause.
Mda believed the Youth League should function as an internal pressure group, a militant nationalistic wing within the ANC as a whole that would propel the organization into a new era. At the time, the ANC did not have a single full-time employee, and was generally poorly organized, operating in a haphazard way. (Later, Walter became the first and only full-time ANC staff member at an extremely meager salary.)
Mda quickly established a branch of the Youth League at Fort Hare under the guidance of Z. K. Matthews and Godfrey Pitje, a lecturer in anthropology. They recruited outstanding students, bringing in fresh blood and new ideas. Among the most outstanding were Professor Matthews’s brilliant son Joe, and Robert Sobukwe, a dazzling orator and incisive thinker.
Mda was more moderate in his nationalism than Lembede, and his thinking was without the racial tinge that characterized Lembede’s. He hated white oppression and white domination, not white people themselves. He was also less extreme in his opposition to the Communist Party than Lembede — or myself. I was among the Youth Leaguers who were suspicious of the white left. Even though I had befriended many white Communists, I was wary of white influence in the ANC, and I opposed joint campaigns with the party. I was concerned that the Communists were intent on taking over our movement in the guise of joint action. I believed that it was an undiluted African nationalism, not Marxism or multiracialism, that would liberate us. With a few of my colleagues in the league, I even went so far as breaking up CP meetings by storming the stage, tearing up signs, and capturing the microphone. At the national conference of the ANC in December, the Youth League introduced a motion demanding the expulsion of all members of the Communist Party, but we were soundly defeated. Despite the influence the Indian passive resistance campaign of 1946 had on me, I felt about the Indians the same way I did about the Communists: that they would tend to dominate the ANC, in part because of their superior education, experience, and training.