Engeli, a name derived from the word "Engel" (German for Angel), is the name given to a range of mountains in the Eastern Cape. This mountain range inspired OR Tambo, who spent his formative years as well as the remaining years of his life following exile in these mountains, to write:

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“Looking out from my home, the site of it commanded a wide view of the terrain as it swept from the vicinity of my home and stretched away as far as the eye could see – the panorama bordered on a high range of mountains that faced [me]. The Engeli Mountains were a huge wall that rolls in the distance to mark the end of very broken landscape, a landscape of great variety and, looking back now, I would say great beauty… You had this sweep of terrain stretching to the foot of the mountain range that then rose gracefully in the distance, cutting your view from everything else beyond the range…

 

“But the nagging question was, what lay beyond the Engeli Mountains? Just exactly what was there? Were there people? What type of people? Were there towns? Were they like Bizana?... How far would one be able to walk over the mountains to Egoli, Johannesburg? What sort of world would it be? This was an unavoidable question whenever you looked in the direction of this range. What did it conceal from my view?

 

“I saw two worlds. The one in the vicinity of my home, which bordered this range of mountains, and its continuation eastward and westward. This was my world. I understood it from my mother’s rondavel outside its precincts to the neighbours [in] Kantolo… I was part of this world. There was obviously another one, beyond the Engeli Mountains.”

 

OLIVER TAMBO: BEYOND THE ENGELI MOUNTAINS

- by Lulu Callinicos