A Circle of Impressions Long Walk Original Manuscript (Image #220)

and the Wesleyan Church, the former being chief steward of the Cape Western Region of the Church. We had a heavy progrramme and travelled every day after working hours to places as far afield as Worcester, Paarl, Stellenbosch, Simonstown and Hermanus. Being from Johannesburg where we used weekends as well, especially Sundays, for political work, and because of the crowded engagements they had arranged for me, I insisted that we should work on Sundays also, but they firmly told me that this holy day was reserved solely for church affairs. I could not move them. Cape Town interpreted the provisions of the Freedom Charter very literally and assumed that it had removed all differences between the ANC and its sister Congresses, and that from the moment the Chapter was adopted members of the one were now free to attend meetings of the other. At a meeting of the officials of the Cape Western Region of the ANC held at Langa I was surprised to see Benny Turok of the SACOD amongst those present and I immediately drew attention to the irregularity. I met with a wall of opposition from almost everybody there and it took quite some time to convince them that they were out of step with the Congress movement in this regard. However, I compromised and suggested that Benny Turok took part in the proceedings of that particular meeting. Later my hostess, Mrs Teka, invited him and his wife Mary to supper and we discussed the matter more fully. This was my second visit to Cape Town and it differed significantly form the first one. When I visited Cape Town in 1948 I had a lot of time for pleasure and spent whole days sightseeing,