“soCial eQuality is the only Basis of huMan haPPiness”

These discoveries were part of the ongoing process of his sundering with Xhosa custom, ritual, and taboo. h is relationship with Mathona foreshadowed his commitment to social, economic, and political equality for women. In a letter, dated 1 August 1970, Nelson Mandela wrote, “Social equality is the only basis of human happiness”.

ben Mahlasela, a teacher with bachelor of Arts degree, was another of the Clarkebury people whose attitude and behaviour had a profound effect on Mandela’s development. At that time, as was then the case in trinidad and tobago, “a black man with a b.A. was expected to scrape before a white man with a grade school education. No matter how high a black man advanced, he was still considered inferior to the lowest white man.” Mr. Mahlasela, however, was not “cowed” by Rev. harris and met him on “equal terms, disagreeing with him where others simply assented”.

Even though his time at Clarkebury broadened his experience, Mandela was not “entirely open-minded” and “unprejudiced” when he left the school. he was “still, at heart, a thembu, and proud to think and act like one... (his) horizons did not extend beyond thembuland and (he) believed... being a thembu was the most enviable thing in the world”.