the great PlaCe, MQhekezWeni

Late in the afternoon, at the bottom of a shallow valley surrounded by trees, they came upon a village at the centre of which was... the great Place, Mqhekezweni, the provisional capital of thembuland, the Royal residence of Chief Jongintaba Dalindyebo, acting regent of the thembu people’’. Until Rohlihlahla saw Jongintaba and his court he had had no higher ambition than to ‘’eat well and become a champion stick fighter... no thought of money... class... fame or power.’’ the regent and his wife, No-England, treated Nelson as though he were their own child. they worried about him, guided him, disciplined him with ‘’loving fairness’’, and gave him the nick name of tatomkhulu, ‘grandpa’, because they thought he ‘’looked like an old man when he was very serious’’.

Again, he attended a one-room school room where he studied English, reading the Chambers English Reader like many trinidad and tobago students of the time, Xhosa, history, and geography and did lessons on black slates, familiar to trinidad and tobago students of 1960s and earlier. Rolihlahla did well in school but believed it was more through doggedness than cleverness that he achieved results.

It was at Mqhekezweni that he met Justice, the regent’s only son and heir to the great Place, and Nelson’s first hero after his father’s death. they became best friends even though they were opposites in many ways. Justice was ‘’extroverted’’ and ‘’light-hearted’’ and ‘’things came easily to him’’. by contrast, Nelson was ‘’introverted, serious, and had to drill himself’’ to keep up with Justice. Moreover, unlike Justice, Nelson also had chores and errands to do at the regent’s house.

Oddly, the chore he enjoyed the most was pressing the regent’s suits, spending ‘’many an hour carefully making the crease in his trousers’’. Later, too, Nelson’s work in his secondary school garden “planted in (him) a lifelong love of gardening and growing vegetables’’. Many rural students of trinidad and tobago have been encouraged and given the means to cultivate their own gardens as a vital part of the culture of school life. these lessons in service and selflessness were easily assimilated and are glowing testimony to his humility; a virtue that, in spite of a certain tendency in his youth to intellectual and hierarchical smugness, powered Mandela’s actions throughout his life.