In the South African summer of 1946, a young military veteran named Jules Browde enrolled as a law student at Wits University in Johannesburg. As he waited for his first seminar to begin, a “very tall, handsome” man walked in. “He was strapping,” Browde recalled decades later — and everyone looked up and clocked him. The most distinctive thing about the young man, though, was neither his height nor his broad shoulders: it was the colour of his skin. Nelson Mandela was the only black student in his class.
Mandela made his way to an empty chair next to Browde’s. The moment he sat down, the student sitting on the other side of him made a great show of getting up and going to sit on the opposite side of the room.
Nobody said a word. The professor walked in, and the lecture began.