Professional Life
I at first aspired to become a privy councillor for my family's royal house, so I began my
secondary education at Clarkebury Boarding Institute in Engcobo, a Western-style institution that was the largest school for black Africans in Thembuland. In 1937 I moved to Healdtown, the Methodist college in Fort Beaufort attended by most of my royal family. I later began work on a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree at the University of Fort Hare, an elite black institution in Alice, Eastern Cape. To escape and arranged marriage, I found work as a night watchman at Crown Mines, and saw my first sight of South
African capitalism in action, but I was fired when the induna (headman) discovered I was a runaway. Passing my BA exams in early 1943, I returned to Johannesburg to follow a political path as a lawyer. Beginning my law studies at the University of Witwatersrand, I was the only native African in the faculty. My ANC activist friend, Oliver Tambo, encouraged me to join the revolutionary movement he was involved in. I later became the president of the ANC in 1991 and the first democratically elected president of South Africa in 1994.
secondary education at Clarkebury Boarding Institute in Engcobo, a Western-style institution that was the largest school for black Africans in Thembuland. In 1937 I moved to Healdtown, the Methodist college in Fort Beaufort attended by most of my royal family. I later began work on a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree at the University of Fort Hare, an elite black institution in Alice, Eastern Cape. To escape and arranged marriage, I found work as a night watchman at Crown Mines, and saw my first sight of South
African capitalism in action, but I was fired when the induna (headman) discovered I was a runaway. Passing my BA exams in early 1943, I returned to Johannesburg to follow a political path as a lawyer. Beginning my law studies at the University of Witwatersrand, I was the only native African in the faculty. My ANC activist friend, Oliver Tambo, encouraged me to join the revolutionary movement he was involved in. I later became the president of the ANC in 1991 and the first democratically elected president of South Africa in 1994.