I was gratified to have my mother there, but the fact that No-England came made it seem as though the regent himself had blessed the event.

After the graduation, I spent a few days with Daliwonga (K.D.’s clan name, which is what I called him), at his home in Qamata. Daliwonga had already chosen the path of traditional leadership. He was in the line of succession to become the head of Emigrant Thembuland, which lies in the westernmost part of the Transkei, and while I was staying with him he pressed me to return to Umtata after qualifying as an attorney. “Why do you stay in Johannesburg?” he said. “You are needed more here.”

It was a fair point; there were certainly more professional Africans in the Transvaal than in the Transkei. I told Daliwonga that his suggestions were premature. But in my heart, I knew I was moving toward a different commitment. Through my friendship with Gaur and Walter, I was beginning to see that my duty was to my people as a whole, not just a particular section or branch. I felt that all the currents in my life were taking me away from the Transkei and toward what seemed like the center, a place where regional and ethnic loyalties gave way before a common purpose.

The graduation at Fort Hare offered a moment of introspection and reflection. I was struck most forcefully by the discrepancy between my old assumptions and my actual experience. I had discarded my presumptions that graduates automatically became leaders and that my connection to the Thembu royal house guaranteed me respect. Having a successful career and a comfortable salary were no longer my ultimate goals. I found myself being drawn into the world of politics because I was not content with my old beliefs.

In Johannesburg, I moved in circles where common sense and practical experience were more important than high academic qualifications. Even as I was receiving my degree, I realized that hardly anything I had learned at university seemed relevant in my new environment. At the university, teachers had shied away from topics like racial oppression, lack of opportunities for Africans, and the nest of laws and regulations that subjugate the black man. But in my life in Johannesburg, I confronted these things every day. No one had ever suggested to me how to go about removing the evils of racial prejudice, and I had to learn by trial and error.

 

 

When I returned to Johannesburg at the beginning of 1943, I enrolled at the University of the Witwatersrand for an LL.B., a bachelor of laws degree, the preparatory academic training for a lawyer. The University of the Witwatersrand, known to all as “Wits,” is located in Braamfontein in north-central Johannesburg, and is considered by many to be the premier English-speaking university in South Africa.

While working at the law firm brought me into regular contact with whites for the first time, the university introduced me to a group of whites my own age. At Fort Hare we had occasional contacts with white students from Rhodes University in Grahamstown, but at Wits, I was attending classes with white students. This was as new to them as it was to me, for I was the only African student in the law faculty.

The English-speaking universities of South Africa were great incubators of liberal values. It was a tribute to these institutions that they allowed black students. For the Afrikaans universities, such a thing was unthinkable.

Despite the university’s liberal values, I never felt entirely comfortable there. Always to be the only African, except for menial workers, to be regarded at best as a curiosity and at worst as an interloper, is not a congenial experience. My manner was guarded, and I met both generosity and animosity. Although I was to discover a core of sympathetic whites who became friends and later colleagues, most of the whites at Wits were not liberal or color-blind. I recall getting to a lecture a few minutes late one day and taking a seat next to Sarel Tighy, a classmate who later became a member of Parliament for the United Party. Though the lecture had already started and there were only a few empty seats, he ostentatiously collected his things and moved to a seat distant from me. This type of behavior was the rule rather than the exception. No one uttered the word kaffir; their hostility was more muted, but I felt it just the same.

Our law professor, Mr. Hahlo, was a strict, cerebral sort, who did not tolerate much independence on the part of his students.