But in due course, and provided they are flexible and prepared to examine their work self critically, they will acquire the necessary experience and foresight that will enable them to avoid the ordinary pitfalls and pick out their way ahead amidst the throb of events.

2. FROM HIS UNPUBLISHED AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MANUSCRIPT WRITTEN IN PRISON

In Alexandra, life was exciting and, although the racial policies of the present government have destroyed its social fabric and reduced it to a ghost town, thinking of it always evokes in me fond memories.1 Here I learnt to adjust myself to urban life and came into physical contact with all the evils of white supremacy. Although the township had some beautiful buildings, it was a typical slum area – overcrowded and dirty, with undernourished children running about naked or in filthy rags. It teamed with all kinds of religious sects, gangsters and shebeens. Life was cheap and the gun and the knife ruled at night. Very often the police would raid for passes, poll tax and liquor and arrest large numbers. In spite of this, Alexandra was more than a home for its fifty thousand residents. As one of the few areas of the country where Africans could acquire freehold property, and run their own affairs free from the tyranny of municipal regulations, it was both a symbol and a challenge. Its establishment was an acknowledgement that a section of our people had broken their ties with the rural areas and become permanent town dwellers. Drawn from all the African language groups, its population was politically conscious, more articulate and with a sense of solidarity which was causing increasing concern among the whites. It became clear to me that the leadership of my people would come from the urban areas where militant workers and an emergent class of prosperous and ambitious traders were suffering all the frustrations of racial prejudice. These are the straps that bind one tightly to Alex. Up to the actual moment of my arrest fourteen years ago, I regarded the township as a home in which I had no specific house, and Orlando, where my wife and children still live, as a place where I had a house but no home.

3. FROM HIS UNPUBLISHED AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MANUSCRIPT WRITTEN IN PRISON

A warm friendship developed between me and Lazar Sidelsky and the numerous acts of kindness and assistance he gave me on all sorts of problems would fill a whole chapter.2 A very special friend was John Mngoma, an orator and well versed in Zulu history. I would listen to him for hours relating interesting episodes from our past…As a result of these and other contacts I made during my early days in Johannesburg, I developed some inner strength and soon forgot about my difficulties and my poverty and suffering, my loneliness and frustrations. These connections gave me the confidence that I could stand on my own feet, enjoy the goodwill and support of worthy men and women I had not previously known and to whom I could turn in case of need. And now I had a home of my own choice far away from my birthplace and had made progress, however little, mainly through my own initiative and resources. I have a special attachment to the people who befriended me during times of distress. A feature of many of these friendships is that they were built around families rather than individuals, and they have scarcely been affected by the death of those members through whom they were founded.

4. CONVERSATION WITH RICHARD STENGEL

MANDELA: But there is a fellow I became friendly with at Healdtown, and that friendship bore fruit when I reached Johannesburg. A chap called Zachariah Molete. He was in charge of sour milk in Healdtown, and if you are friendly to him, he would give you very thick sour milk…When I arrived in Johannesburg in the early forties, I stayed in…Alexandra township, and I became a close friend of his, because his father had…a grocery shop, and he was the chief steward of the Wesleyan Church and he looked after me, because I was struggling, made sure I got some groceries. [On] one particular occasion he came to me and said, ‘Look, you must be very careful at night because there is a gang which they call the Thutha Ranch.’ Now ‘thutha’ means collecting and taking away. They were such gangsters, such thieves, that when they raided your house they would remove everything – they got the name from there. And he says, ‘They are operating in your area here.’ Now I was staying…in a single room, and one night I woke up because there [was] noise of people walking outside, and I listened to this and I remembered what Zachariah had told me. And then there was an argument and the argument was clear. One chap says, ‘No, let’s get in, let’s go in’ and another one says, ‘No, man, this chap has no money, he has nothing, he’s a student.’ Then they argued…but the other chap was tough. He said, ‘Leave the student alone, man, leave him alone’…But apparently the chap who was insisting got so frustrated, so annoyed, that he kicked the door – it was a poor door you see and the bolt, you know, just snapped. But they didn’t enter; they passed.

STENGEL: That was your door that he kicked?

MANDELA: My door, yes. And I got such a shock, such a shock, but they passed; they didn’t enter…I changed my bed and I put it across the door there, you know, because it was the only way of closing the door and keeping it in place.