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No title {Reflections} Long Walk Original Manuscript (Image #601)

The Nelson Mandela Foundation

The Nelson Mandela Foundation
Johannesburg, South Africa

Chapter 17 of the unpublished autobiography written on Robben Island. In this chapter Nelson Mandela reflect on the events that led up to his imprisonment, his imprisonment and on some of his comrades.

Details

  • Title: No title {Reflections} Long Walk Original Manuscript (Image #601)
  • Date: 1976
  • Date Created: 1976
  • Transcript:
    opposition to separate development and the fact that most of the top and experienced leaders of the movement who influenced the decision were watching developments from afar and never had the opportunity of touring the affected areas and speaking directly to the key figures whose views were crucial on the whole question. As it is our supporters ignored our decision and went to the voting boots to register their emphatic rejection of apartheid. In actual fact although we resolved to boycott the election we did not have the machinery in the Transkei to launch the boycott campaign. In regard to the safeguards the enemy usually takes to ensure that its opponents would not be able to dominate the institutions, people who use this fact against participation completely miss the point and assume that such institutions are a means of achieving our freedom. They forget that we enter them for the purpose of rendering them unworkable or of reaching the masses. Freedom will be won through political organisations that are created by ourselves and through various forms of mass struggle. Secondly, of our men speak from the platforms provided by the institutions and tell the country that separate development is no answer, that the only lasting solution which will bring peace and harmony to South Africa are the demand set out in the Charter, we will be speaking the same language both inside and outside these institutions and the danger of dividing our people will be averted. It is positively barren to argue that we should coling to the Lobatsi decision even though subsequent events have shown that we were not in a position to carry it out not only in regard to the 1963 Transkei election but also in regard to those that were held in 1968 and 1973 as well as the other elections that were subsequently held in the other Bantustans and for the Coloured Peoples Representative Council. This is an absurd argument and applied logically menas that because since 1912 we have used the tactic of non violence we should hold on to it even when conditions clearly
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  • Type: Book
  • Reference code: chapter 17, 601
  • Extent and Medium: Pages 593 to 614, 1 page
  • Collection: Unpublished autobiographical manuscript

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