I said the same thing. How would a ninth grade dropout be aware of apartheid African nations? How did he even know about Emanuel or Sen. Pinckney? If he was unemployed, how did he have money to travel back and forth between Charleston? If he was estranged from his family, who was supporting him? I would love to see some of his writing from school. And who took the pictures???
I have not followed the story at all, but I thought he was born in South Africa, or his family came to the US from there?
Possibly his family put more emphasis on the English language and writing skills, which might explain the writings being of high quality word usage, etc.
JMHO