Mandela Meets his future Wife, Winnie

In church at Mqhekezweni, Mandela met his future wife, Winnie, Reverend Matyolo’s daughter. he invited her out and she accepted. She loved him in spite of the objections of her oldest sister but they drifted apart when they went different ways after she had qualified as a teacher and, eventually, he lost track of her for years. Years later, of course, Winnie Mandela by her loyalty and tireless devotion to her husband and the cause of African freedom, became a powerful symbol of resistance to apartheid and the advancement of their compatriots.

When he was sixteen the regent decided that it was time Mandela became a man. ‘’In Xhosa tradition, this is achieved through one means only: circumcision’’. the last few days of boyhood are spent with other initiates in ‘circumcision school’. A custom associated with circumcision school was that a daring exploit had to be performed by the initiates before the ceremony’’. they decided “to steal a pig... from a tribesman with an ornery old pig... we captured the poor pig, slaughtered it, and then built a fire and ate roast pork underneath the stars’’.