Birth of rolihlahla Mandela

On July 18, 1918, Rolihlahla Mandela was born into the Madiba clan in Mvezo, transkei, a region five hundred and fifty miles south of Johannesburg and eight hundred miles east of Cape town. the population comprised some three and a half million Xhosas who were related to the thembu people, of which Mandela was a member.

h is parents were Nkosi Mphakanyiswa gadla Mandela, principal counsellor to the Acting King of the thembu people, Jongintaba Dalindyebo, and Nonqaphi, Jenny, Nosekeni, gadla’s third wife. Rohlihlahla was one of 13 children and the youngest of his father’s 4 sons. ‘’Apart from life...’’, Madela writes in his autobiography, ‘’... the only thing my father bestowed upon me at birth was a name, Rolihlahla’’.

the name, ‘Rolihlahla’, in Xhosa means literally ‘pulling the branch of a tree’ but the word, ‘troublemaker’, conveys more accurately its inherent meaning. Considering the upheavals in his life, many of them of his own doing, the choice of name seemed prophetic later to many of his family and friends.

the claim hardly does justice to the facts. Like his father, Mandela had a ‘’straight and stately posture’’ and ‘’a tuft of white hair just above his forehead’’, which became a characteristic feature of Mandela’s appearance. h is father could also be ‘’exceedingly stubborn’’ and Mandela was later to state that although he maintained ‘’...nurture, rather than nature, is the primary moulder of personality... my father possessed a proud rebelliousness, a stubborn sense of fairness, that I recognize in myself’’.

Shortly after his birth, in a dispute involving his father and a local white magistrate, in which his father on a matter of principle defied the magistrate’s authority, Nkosi Mandela was charged with insubordination and deposed, ‘’thus ending the Mandela family chieftainship’’. h is father ‘’lost both his fortune and his title. he was deprived of most of his herd and land, and the revenue that came with them’’.