Nelson Mandela is born in the small village of Mvezo, in the Transkei region of South Africa, on July 18, 1918. His birth name is Rolihlahla, which roughly translates as “troublemaker.” The African National Congress (ANC) is founded in the year of his birth.

Transkei is a beautiful and sparsely populated region in southeast South Africa. Most of Transkei’s residents, like Mandela, are Xhosa, an ethnic group belonging to the Bantu people. The Xhosa are, in turn, separated into several tribes; Mandela belongs to the Thembu tribe. Within the book, Mandela delineates some of the region’s traditional social and political structures to explain that he descends from a line of the Thembu royal family that provides advisors to the king.

Mandela’s father, Gadla, is a Thembu chief and close advisor to the Thembu king. When the king dies in the late 1920s, Gadla chooses one of the king’s lesser sons, Jongintaba, to act as royal regent until the king’s infant heir, Sabata, came of age. In 1926, Gadla is deposed by the British. Thereafter, Mandela’s mother, Nosekeni, moves him to Qunu, a larger village where she has friends and relations.

Qunu is a poor village of tenant farmers and herders; the government owns all the land and charges them rent.