No title {Arrest} Long Walk Original Manuscript (Image #492)

mind shifted from admiring the natural beauty to more weighty problems relating to my mission abroad and to the preparations for the new forms of struggle on which we were now contemplating. As we approached Pietermaritzburg Cecil and I started discussing my trip abroad and more particularly the image which our struggle was projecting in Africa. He was visibly disturbed by my report and felt as many others did that the line which I was now advocating was a concession to extreme nationalism. We were engrossed in this discussion as we passed through Pietermaritzburg and Howick. I considered Cecil an important friend of the Congress Movement, and I was anxious to dispel any misgivings he might have harboured. Accordingly I spent quite some time spelling out the dissolution of the Congress Alliance in the form in which it had functioned until then. At Cedara a big Ford car, full of white men, shot past and signalled us to stop. I instinctively looked at the back and noticed two other cars full of whites. I knew that that was the end and that for the time being I would be out of action. We pulled up and Cecil asked, "Who are these men?" But he knew as well as I did who they were. A tall man with a stern expression on his face stepped out of the front car and came over to us. He was unshaven and untidy and left me with the impression that he had been expecting us for several days. He introduced himself as Sgt.Forster (Vorster?) of the Pietermaritzburg police, produced a warrant and asked me who I was. I naturally give him my cover name David Motsamai. After posing a few other questions which I parried, he snapped, "Ach, you are Nelson Mandela, and this is Ceril Williams!" He ordered us to return to Pietermaritzburg. An officer holding the rank of