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Nelson Mandela always enjoyed telling the story of how dramatically the Xhosa poet Mqhayi had burst into his young world, shattering myths and inspiring him to see beyond the barriers he had taken for granted. His telling and retelling of this story was based on Mqhayi’s visit to his Methodist boarding school Healdtown where he was sent to finish his high school education. His account draws the listener into the late 1930s institution ruled over by the colonial figure of Dr Arthur Wellington, whom virtually no one would question – until onto the stage strode Mqhayi who showed his rapt audience how they were the most important of all people. Mr Mandela ends by explaining that he later did, however, learn that it was backward to be tribalistic.

While he was born in the Eastern Cape village of Mvezo, the only son of his father’s third wife, Nelson Mandela spend most of his early childhood in Qunu and later moved to Mqhekezweni after his father died. He has always enjoyed returning to Qunu where he built a house after his release from prison in 1990. Uppermost in his mind as a free man was to visit Qunu where his parents were laid to rest. His mother Nosekeni had died in her Seventies in 1968 when her son was imprisoned on Robben Island. As soon as he could, he visited her grave and that of his father Nkosi (Chief) Mphakanyiswa who had died when he was a boy.