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Informationen zum Autor Beatrice Gormley Klappentext Read about Nelson Mandela's inspiring life and struggle for justice.Nelson Mandela CHAPTER 1 A VILLAGE HERD-BOY ON AN ISLAND OFF THE coast of South Africa, a tall, thin man with graying hair sat in his prison cell. It was 1975. Nelson Mandela was fifty-seven, and he had lived in this cell, which measured seven feet by eight feet, for eleven years. Now he stared at the small barred window in front of him and called up scenes from his childhood. In his mind’s eye, Mandela saw a landscape of rolling green hills. A small boy in an orange blanket appeared on one hilltop, driving cattle with a switch. Mandela seemed to smell roasting corn and taste milk fresh from the cows. He seemed to watch the flames in the fire pit as he listened to his mother’s voice, telling ancient folktales to him and his sisters. Mandela began to write the story of his life. • • • Nelson Mandela was born in a thatched hut in the village of Mvezo, on the banks of the Mbashe River, on July 18, 1918. His mother was Nosekeni Fanny Nkedama, the third wife of the village chief, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa of the Mandela family. They belonged to the Thembu, one of several tribes in the Transkei region of South Africa who spoke the Xhosa language. They named their baby boy Rolihlahla, which literally means “pulling the branch of a tree.” It is also an expression meaning “troublemaker.” The year of Rolihlahla’s birth, 1918, was the year that World War I ended in Europe. Also in 1918 a new South African organization, the African National Congress (ANC), sent a delegation to the Versailles peace conference in France. The ANC was protesting the unfair treatment of black South Africans, because the Union of South Africa had been created in 1910 with no black representatives in the government. The founders of the ANC hoped that by banding together instead of fighting each other, the tribes of South Africa could protect their rights. But in 1918 and for many years afterward, the protests of the ANC were ignored. By the time of Rolihlahla’s birth, the Transkei, a section of the Eastern Cape of South Africa, was no longer ruled by the Xhosa tribes themselves. The British had seized control of the Cape early in the nineteenth century, and in the following decades they continued to struggle with the Dutch settlers, called “Boers,” for the remaining territories of South Africa. Therefore the British were more concerned about working out an agreement with the Boers than about protecting the rights of the native tribes. In 1910 the Boer-controlled lands joined the British-controlled lands to form the Union of South Africa, a dominion in the British Empire. Meanwhile, the Thembu and other Xhosa were allowed to live in the Transkei, but they did not own the land. They paid rent to the British government. The chiefs and elders had a certain amount of power in their own villages, but the final authority in the Transkei was the all-white government of the Union of South Africa. Several months after Rolihlahla’s birth, a villager in Mvezo went to the local white magistrate, protesting a decision the chief had made about a stray ox. The magistrate summoned Gadla Henry to appear before him. Gadla Henry refused, feeling that his authority as chief of the village should be respected. But the magistrate would not allow his authority to be defied. He removed Gadla Henry from the chieftainship, and he took away his herd of cattle and his land. His wealth gone, Gadla Henry could no longer support such a large family. Nosekeni Fanny took her baby, Rolihlahla, and moved from Mvezo to Qunu, a village in a valley thirty miles to the north. Her relatives and friends t...
