He did everything to drive them out, but he failed. Then he decided to leave his kraal [a rural settlement of huts and houses], packed all his things on a wagon and started driving away to settle elsewhere. Along the way, he met a friend and the friend asked, ‘Where are you going?’ Before he answered, a voice came out of the wagon, ‘We are trekking, we are leaving our kraal.’ It was one of the evil spirits. He thought he was leaving them behind; he actually came along with them. And he says, the moral was ‘Don’t run away from your problems; face them! Because if you don’t deal with them, they will always be with you. Deal with a problem which arises; face it courageously.’ That was the moral…I never forgot that, you see, and I accepted that if you have a problem, you must face it and not gloss over it. For example, you know, in politics, there are very sensitive issues and people normally don’t want an unpopular approach. If people say ‘We must go on action’, very few people will say ‘Have we got the resources? Have we made sufficient preparations? Are we in a position to undertake this action?’ Some people like to give an impression of being militant and therefore not to face the problems, especially if they are the type of problems which are going to make you unpopular. Success in politics demands that you must take your people into confidence about your views and state them very clearly, very politely, very calmly, but nevertheless state them openly.

3. FROM A LETTER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA, DATED 22 DECEMBER 19872

I hereby apply for exemption from Latin 1 on the following grounds: Although I obtained a pass in this subject in the 1938 matriculation examinations, and in spite of the fact that I passed a special course in the same subject at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1944, I have forgotten practically everything about it. If I am compelled to attempt the course, I will have to start right from the beginning. At the age of 69 years this will be a very difficult undertaking indeed. I am a qualified attorney, having practiced as such for nine years prior to my arrest and conviction. If I decided to resume practice as an attorney, I would not be required first to obtain a degree course in Latin. In actual fact, I have no intention of ever practicing law again either as an attorney or as an advocate. Even if I had intended practicing law some time in the future, I am not likely ever to do so, since I am serving a sentence of life imprisonment. If you grant this application I propose to register for African Politics in place of Latin 1.

4. FROM HIS UNPUBLISHED AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MANUSCRIPT WRITTEN IN PRISON

My association with the African National Congress has taught me that a broad national movement has numerous and divergent contradictions, fundamental and otherwise. The presence in one organisation of various classes and social groups with conflicting long term interests that may collide at crucial moments brings its own train of conflicts. Contradictions of a different kind may split from top to bottom an otherwise homogeneous class or group, and the prejudices arising from different practices in regard to circumcision are amongst these. I still remember well my first reaction, and even revulsion, at Fort Hare when I discovered that a friend had not observed the custom. I was twenty-one then and my subsequent association with the African National Congress and progressive ideas helped me to crawl out of the prejudice of my youth and to accept all people as equals. I came to accept that I have no right whatsoever to judge others in terms of my own customs, however much I may be proud of such customs;3 that to despise others because they have not observed particular customs is a dangerous form of chauvinism. I consider myself obliged to pay proper respect to my customs and traditions, provided that such customs and traditions tend to keep us together and do not in any way conflict with the aims and objects of the struggle against racial oppression. But I shall neither impose my own customs on others nor follow any practice which will offend my comrades, especially now that freedom has become so costly.

5. FROM A CONVERSATION WITH RICHARD STENGEL

Oh, yes, yes. I was proud of that because we were told by our teachers, ‘Now you are at Fort Hare, you are going to be a leader of your people.’4 This was what was being drummed upon us, and of course in those days to have a degree as a black man was something very important. And so I had this feeling, and of course the King was very proud that he had a son, a member of the clan, who was at Fort Hare.

6. FROM HIS UNPUBLISHED AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MANUSCRIPT WRITTEN IN PRISON

But the process of illusion and disillusionment is part of life and goes on endlessly. In the early [19]40s what struck me forcefully was the conflict between my expectations and actual experience.