FROM THE UNPUBLISHED SEQUEL TO HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Soon after returning from prison I travelled down to E.L. [East London] and met Comrade Silumko Sokupa and the Regional Committee of the ANC [African National Congress] to acquaint myself with the situation in that area. In their briefing they informed me that King Zanesizwe Sandile of the Ngqikas would visit me at the hotel. I was shocked because that was a breach of protocol to ask the king to visit me at a hotel.

I instructed the committee to phone and inform the king that he should remain at the Palace, I would later come and pay a courtesy visit there. At that moment the king walked in. I apologised and pointed out that many of today’s youth were born and grew up in the urban areas. They know precious little about traditional leaders. It is not so much because of disrespect but ignorance which makes [them] unaware of protocol.

Heroes like the Khoi leader, Autshumayo,4 Maqoma of the Rharhabe, Bambatha, Cetywayo of the Zulu, Mampuru of the Pedis, Tshivhase of the Vendas and a host of others, were in the forefront of the wars of resistance and we speak of them with respect and admiration…Even at the height of the severe repression by the apartheid regime there were courageous monarchs like Sabata of the Thembus and Cyprian of the Zulus who refused to betray their people…Many of our traditional leaders are also not aware of the lessons of history. They do not seem to know that there were once absolute monarchs in the world who did not share power with their subjects…It is monarchs…themselves or their predecessors, [who] decided to allow elected representatives of the people to govern, and who became constitutional monarchs who survived, like Queen Elizabeth II of Britain, King Carlos of Spain, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, King Harald of Norway and King Carl XVI Gustaf.

Had these monarchs clung stubbornly to their absolute powers they would long have disappeared from the scene.

But we must never forget that the institution of traditional leaders is sanctified by African law and custom, by our culture and tradition. No attempt must be made to abolish it. We must find an amicable solution based on democratic principles, and which allows traditional leaders to play a meaningful role in levels of government.

…I am not clear to what extent a significant initiative of the apartheid government…was available in other Bantustans. But in the Transkei there was a school for the sons of traditional leaders which gave them basic skills in the administration of areas under their jurisdiction. I would not urge that we should have such schools. But depending on the resources that the government has, it would be advisable to encourage sons of traditional leaders to get the best education. Although my own resources are very limited, I have sent a number of sons and daughters of traditional leaders to universities in South Africa, and to the United Kingdom and the United States of America. A literate corps of educated traditional leaders would in all probability accept the democratic process. The inferiority complex which makes many of them to cling desperately to feudal forms of administration would, in due course, disappear.

8. FROM A LETTER TO NOMABUTHO BHALA, DATED 1 JANUARY 1971

Your letter was one of the shortest I ever received, the entire contents consisting only of one compound sentence. Yet it is one of the best letters I had read for a long time. I had thought that our generation of rabble-rousers had vanished with the close of the fifties. I had also believed that with all the experience of almost 50 years behind me, in the course of which I attentively listened to many persuasive speakers, and read first-class biographies of some of the world’s most prominent figures, it would not be easy for me to be carried away by mere beauty of prose or smooth flow of one’s oratory. Yet the few lines that you scrawled carefully across that modest sheet of writing material moved me much more than all the classics I have read. Many of the personalities that featured in your remarkable dream lived, simply and without written records, some 3 centuries ago. Neither you nor I ever saw them plan the operations that were to make them famous in history, nor did we watch as they went into action. For most of them there is not even one authentic photograph which would at least give us a faint idea of their physical features or personality. Yet even a polished urbanite like yourself, who lives in the second half of the 20th century, with all the fantastic progress and achievement that mark it, and who is cut off from the influence of tribal life, cannot wipe away from your thoughts, plans and dreams the rugged and fierce heroes of the Neolithic age. They were unusual men – the exceptions that are found elsewhere in the world; in so far as their economy and implements were concerned they lived in the Stone Age, and yet they founded large and stable kingdoms by means of metal weapons. In the conflicts that were later to rock the country, they gave a good account of themselves, holding at bay for a continuous period of more than [one] hundred years, a community millennia in advance of themselves in economic organisation and technology, and which made full use of the scientific resources at their disposal.

I find the explanation for your dream in the simple fact that you read deeper lessons into our ancestry. You regard their heroic deeds during the deathless century of conflict as a model for the life we should lead today. When their country was threatened they showed the highest standard of patriotism.