No title {Reflections} Long Walk Original Manuscript (Image #599)

that in deciding whether we should use these institutions or not we should be guided by this approach which was the basic policy of the Congress movement. But the point which was hammered over and over again was that our principal task was to strengthen our organisations and to mobilise and prepare out people for the new method of struggle we had decided to use, that the whole issue of participation in apartheid institutions turned on whether it owuld enable us to make our political organsations stronger and carry the message of revolution to the people. The argument that the Bolshevik Party regared the boycott of the Duma as a question of principle was treated contemptuously and dismissed as due mainly to ignorance of the history of that Party. Finally it was pointed out that there need to be no conflict between mobilising and preparing the people for armed struggle and using dummy institutions as legal platforms to preach our own views. In fact those who put forward this line of approach made it clear that their views were premised on the fact that the armed struggle was a reality. (Discuss). (10) In all countries where the boycott of dummy institutions has been examined it has been a controversial issue. The enemy has always used such institutions for the purpose of dividing the people and weakening the whole struggle against oppression. Such institutions must always be seen as a means of maintaining the status quo and of sowing confusion among the people. It is natural that any suggestion that the liberation movement should in any way be associated with such institutions, irrespective of the reasons for doing so, should be considered by some emotianally as willingness on the part of the oppressed people to operate a machinery designed primarily for their own oppression. Secondly these institutions invariably contain safeguards to ensure that if the