IN 1937 , when I was nineteen, I joined Justice at Healdtown, the Wesleyan College in Fort Beaufort, about one hundre…

UNLIKE MOST OF THE OTHERS   with whom I had been at circumcision school, I was not destined to work in the gold mines…

WHEN I WAS SIXTEEN , the regent decided that it was time that I became a man. In Xhosa tradition, this is achieved th…

Because of the universal respect the regent enjoyed—from both black and white—and the seemingly untempered power that…

ONE NIGHT , when I was nine years old, I was aware of a commotion in the household. My father, who took turns visitin…

THE VILLAGE OF QUNU was situated in a narrow, grassy valley crisscrossed by clear streams, and overlooked by green hi…