When I remember the years gone by, especially the years of my childhood in a place called Mavambe (situated in what is now the Limpopo province), it is often visual images of people and places which come to mind. I remember the sombre darkness of some winter nights, when it was too bitingly cold for anyone to linger outside. I have memories of my mother carrying out everyday household chores in our yard or planting seed for a maize and vegetable harvest in the summer. Such memories are vivid enough. However, they are remarkably difficult to put into words.

I have always known and accepted the family history which says that I was born in Mavambe on 13 March 1940. If you were to insist on concrete evidence of my date of birth, neither my late parents nor I would be able to provide it, but I believe that date to be accurate because, at the beginning of the 1947 school year, when I started attending the one-teacher, one-classroom school across the river from our home, I was believed to be seven years old. With the exception of the year 1948, the most memorable and happiest part of my childhood was spent in Mavambe with my mother.

In 1948 I was sent away to live for a year at the home of my mother's brother, Jim Manyangi, in Nwamatatani (many kilometres away) to attend the Assemblies of God school at the Caledon Mission, where I completed Standard One. The most visible figure at the school was a short, plumpish white woman called Miss Nash, who appeared to be in charge of everything that happened at both the small mission and the school. At the end of that year I returned home to attend another Assemblies of God school, which had classes up to Standard Six, the national qualification level for entry into high school. At both schools there was much praying and talk about Christianity, Jesus and God – talk which was unheard of at my home and within the chief's village where we lived.

It was just as well that I was whisked away after only a year at the Caledon Mission. My uncle's children showed little enthusiasm for learning to read and write and I was fortunate to have been rescued from the prospect of a lifetime of illiteracy and ignorance.