Long Walk to Freedom ( Nelson Mandela ) Chapter 19 Part 1

Long Walk to Freedom ( Nelson Mandela ) Chapter 19 Part 1

WHEN I RECEIVED my banning, the Transvaal conference of the ANC was due to be held the following month, and I had already completed the draft of my presidential address. It was read to the conference by Andrew Kunene, a member of the executive. In that speech, which subsequently became known as “The No Easy Walk to Freedom” speech, a line taken from Jawaharlal Nehru, I said that the masses now had to be prepared for new forms of political struggle. The new laws and tactics of the government had made the old forms of mass protest—public meetings, press statements, stay-aways—extremely dangerous and self-destructive. Newspapers would not publish our statements; printing presses refused to print our leaflets, all for fear of prosecution under the Suppression of Communism Act. “These developments,” I wrote, “require the evolution of new forms of political struggle. The old methods,” I said, were now “suicidal.” “The oppressed people and the oppressors are at loggerheads. The day of reckonin…