Nelson Mandela Timeline 1800-2010

Nelson Mandela Timeline 1930-1939

1934

Mandela is sixteen years old and together with other young men undergoes the traditional Xhosa initiation ceremony. The Initiation school is held on the banks of the Mbashe River.

Rolihlahla and his cousin Justice attend Clarkebury, a Wesleyan missionary school and at that time the biggest education centre in Tembuland. The school is run by Reverend C.C. Harris "...with an iron hand and an abiding sense of fairness", Mandela later remembered. At Clarkesbury he is given the name Nelson.

1936

After two years at Clarkebury, Mandela is sent further away to Healdtown, a bigger institution where he is taught an entirely Eurocentric curriculum focused on British history. His history teacher, Weaver Newana, adds his own oral history to the narratives about the previous century's frontier wars between the Xhosa and the British colonists.

He takes up boxing and long-distance running. The teaching staff is dedicated, but for the first time Mandela becomes aware that noble Christian values are contradicted by tolerance and even support of the racist colonial system. The missionaries believe they are saving the souls of Black people and reject traditional rituals and customs as 'superstitions'. Still, "I believe their benefits outweighed their disadvantages", he later recalls.

The Hertzog Bills remove Black voters from the common voters' roll. The tabling of these Bills elicits anger and a call for united Black opposition. At the time Mandela and his friends are shielded from the intense debate that these Bills elicited amongst the Black elite in particular.

1938

Mandela wins a prize for best Xhosa essay. He is thrilled when the noted Xhosa poet Krune Mqhayi visits the college, dramatically dressed in a traditional kaross of hide and carrying two spears, to recite his poem.

1939

January, Mandela enrolls at the South African Native College at Fort Hare near Alice in the Eastern Cape. The Mandela's nephew Kaizer Matanzima, is also attending Fort Hare and they become close friends, though in later years they would become political opponents. Matanzima remembered, 'The two of us were very handsome young men, and all the women wanted us'.

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