My friend the Rev Zolile Mbali, who has died aged 84, was an Anglican priest in the UK and in his native South Africa, from which he was forced to move in the early 1970s.
Zoli was born in Johannesburg to a Xhosa father and a Sotho mother, Elizabeth (nee Makhoatle), a teacher. After his birth his mother took him to live on the family farm beyond Matatiele in the remote Drakensburg foothills of Transkei. He lived there until he was 10, combining herding with learning in isiXhosa and Sesotho. Sent to further his education in Afrikaans, he stayed with a clergyman uncle near Johannesburg, whose curate at the time was Desmond Tutu.
