Early Life
Born and raised in Mbewuleni, what is now the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, Mbeki is one of four children of Epainette and Govan Mbeki. His father was a stalwart of the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party. He is a native Xhosa speaker. His parents were both teachers and activists in a rural area of ANC strength, and Mbeki describes himself as "born into the struggle"; a portrait of Karl Marx sat on the family mantelpiece, and a portrait of Mohandas Gandhi was on the wall.
Mbeki attended primary school in Idutywa and Butterworth and acquired a high school education at Lovedale, Alice. In 1959, he was expelled from school as a result of student strikes and forced to continue studies at home. In the same year, he sat for matriculation examinations at St. John's High School, Umtata. In the ensuing years, he completed British A-levels examinations and undertook an economics degree as an external student with the University of London. During this time, the ANC was banned and Mbeki was involved in underground activities in the Pretoria-Witwatersrand area. He was also involved in mobilising students in support of the ANC call for a stay at home to be held in protest of South Africa's becoming a republic.
In December 1961, Mbeki was elected secretary of the African Students' Association. In the following year, he left South Africa on instructions of the ANC.
Govan Mbeki had come to the rural Eastern Cape as a political activist after earning two university degrees; he urged his family to make the ANC their family, and of his children, Thabo Mbeki is the one who most clearly followed that instruction, joining the party at age 14 and devoting his life to it thereafter.
Read more about this topic: Thabo Mbeki
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