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Mbeki's birthplace: Mbewuleni, Epainette and Govan Mbeki moved there to start their family, set up a co-op store, live independent from government salaries, put peasant upliftment into practice; Mbekis lived in the qaba (traditional Xhosa) section of the village, not the amagqoboka (Christian convert) section; the Mbeki family - missionaries, workers; Govan's father, Skelewu Mbeki was a colonial appointed headman, a black Englishman, Mbekis from the amaZizi clan the Mfengu / Fingo an outsider clan, displaced in the mid 19th century, Christian converts who assisted the British against the Xhosa, they were educated, non-traditional , Christianised; in latter 19th century they were moved back into the Transkei reserve, Skelewu Mbeki built a homestead at Nyili in ±1904; Govan Mbeki born when Skelewu was 81; story of the Mbekis case in point of the black rural experience in the 20th century: the destruction of the South African peasant economy by the state and mining industry; prosperous peasant class like Mbekis were built up by colonial powers to act as buffers in the Eastern Cape; in 1911 Skelewu dismissed as headman for illegally selling oxen, headmanship offered to Govan in 1934; Mbeki's African Renaissance complicated by the Mfengu legacy: a sense of prosperity lost through colonialism but other benefits - like worldliness, a Western education, a calling to save others - remain
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