university College of fort hare; Mandela Meets k.d. MatanziMa and oliver taMBo

In 1939 when Nelson Mandela entered the University College of Fort hare, about 20 miles east of healdtown, it was “the only residential centre of higher education for blacks in South Africa... for young black South Africans... it was Oxford and Cambridge, harvard and Yale, all rolled into one”. the benefits of the mission schools, in Mandela’s reasoning, “outweighed the disadvantages. the missionaries built and ran schools when the government was unwilling or unable to do so (and) the learning environment... was far more open than the racist principles underlying government schools”.

to mark his entry to Fort hare the regent presented him with his first suit. he was twenty-one years old and “could not imagine anyone at Fort hare smarter than (he)”. before we condemn him for such a statement it should be noted there were only 150 students at the college. One of them who was to exert a strong influence on Mandela was a third-year student, K. D. Matanzima. Even though he was in his third-year and older than Mandela he was in reality his nephew by the customs of tribal hierarchy.

K.D., as Mandela referred to him, was the first person to encourage Mandela to study law. he had planted a seed even though Mandela had his heart “set on being an interpreter or a clerk in the Native Affairs Department”. At that time a career as a civil servant was a “glittering prize for an African, the highest (to which) a black man could aspire”. Dr. Courtney bartholomew, in an interview with the writer in 2010, pointed out that in trinidad and tobago in the 1950s even brilliant scholars who did not ‘win’ government awarded ‘Island Scholarships’ went into the civil service. the upperclassmen were not so easily cowed and appealed to Rev. A. J. Cook, the warden of the college, to intervene on their behalf and restore the status quo. the freshmen remained resolute and threatened to resign as a body if he overruled them. the warden decided not to intervene; the freshmen remained in place. It was one of Mandela’s first battles with authority and he “felt the sense of power that (came) from having right and justice on (his) side”.

One of Mandela’s first battles with authority occurred when he and the other freshmen found it undemocratic that they were not allowed to sit on the house Committee that looked after the dormitory issues of first year students. they held meetings, “lobbied all the residents of the house” and “elected (their) own house Committee”. Mandela, one of the organizers, was elected to the new committee.

Also in his first year, upon joining the Students Christian Association, Nelson Mandela met Oliver tambo, the man who years later became his partner in the first law firm run by Africans in South Africa: Mandela and tambo. he was also one of the founding members in 1943 of the Youth League of the African National Congress (ANCYL). the body that was instrumental in organizing the struggle for freedom for black Africans.