Around Mother Africa Long Walk Original Manuscript (Image #438)

from every part of the world would enable us to fight our way right to the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans. 14 years have passed since I visited Ethiopia and Algeria and yet that dream remains as fervent today as it was when I watched the stirring displays at Debra Zaid and Oujda. In December 1961 the ANC received an invitation from the Pan African Freedom Movement for East, Central and Southern Africa (PAFMECSA) to attend its conference at Addis Ababa in February 1962, and I was asked to attend and lead our delegation there. I was reluctant to do so because after the 3 day strike the previous May I had publicly stated that I would not leave the country but would operate from underground. I was not convinced that leaving South Africa even for the specific purpose of attending such an important conference was compatible with the announcement I had made. But when my colleagues insisted that I should none the less leave I had no alternative but to do so. They pointed out that my actual return to South Africa after I had publicly announced the fact at the Addis Ababa conference would remove any impression that I had not honoured my undertaking. Apart from attending the PAFMECSA conference, there was the question of seeing Kwame Nkrumah to discuss the hostile attitude of the Bureau of African Affairs towards the ANC, an attitude we were certain the Ghana President was not aware of. Peter Raboroko, a member of the executive committee of the PAC, was serving on the editorial board of the "Voice of Ghana (Africa?)" and on South African politics he had turned that publication into a PAC propaganda organ. We felt that the time had come for us to discuss the whole question with the Ghana