No title {Reflections} Long Walk Original Manuscript (Image #600)

oppressed people decide to enter and exploit them for revolutionary purposes they should find it difficult to gain complete control of them. This is done either by the oppressor nominating the majority of members and by making provisions for the election of the remainder through electoral colleges or by a combination or variation of both forms. The danger is always there that in our desire to capture these institutions the essential work of building our political organisations may be neglected. But this is an imaginary danger (a) because the strengthening of our organisations and the setting up of an effective machinery is the areas would be the first step in our preparation for participation and (b) because it is the experience of our movement that it is during mass campaigns that our organisation and its machinery is built up. Finally many people would like us to have nothing to do with these institutions not because they are so thick headed as to imagine that militant political organisations that have an impressive record of opposition to all forms of racial oppression and are leading the armed struggle in South Africa, now want to collaborate with the enemy, but because the failure of the bid to capture them carries the danger of exploding the claim that our organisation has a mass following and of damaging its claim as the premier national movement. (11) I was already in prison when the 1962 Lobatsi Conference decided to boycott the elections in the Bantustan Legislatures, with particular reference to the Transkei elections that were due to be held the following year. I made my views known on the subject as soon as I became aware of the decision and it seemed to me to have been inspired more by hatred of apartheid institutions, exagerated reports about the tactics the people of the Transkei would wish to use in expressing their