exploded at the conductor, telling him that he did not even understand the word kaffir and that it was offensive to call me that name. The conductor promptly stopped the tram and hailed a policeman, who arrested us, took us down to the station, and charged us. We were ordered to appear in court the following day. That night, Ismail and J.N. arranged for Bram Fischer to defend us. The next day, the magistrate seemed in awe of Bram’s family connections. We were promptly acquitted and I saw firsthand that justice was not at all blind.

Wits opened a new world to me, a world of ideas and political beliefs and debates, a world where people were passionate about politics. I was among white and Indian intellectuals of my own generation, young men who would form the vanguard of the most important political movements of the next few years. I discovered for the first time people of my own age firmly aligned with the liberation struggle, who were prepared, despite their relative privilege, to sacrifice themselves for the cause of the oppressed.

Part Three

BIRTH OF A FREEDOM FIGHTER

11

I CANNOT PINPOINT a moment when I became politicized, when I knew that I would spend my life in the liberation struggle. To be an African in South Africa means that one is politicized from the moment of one’s birth, whether one acknowledges it or not. An African child is born in an Africans Only hospital, taken home in an Africans Only bus, lives in an Africans Only area, and attends Africans Only schools, if he attends school at all.

When he grows up, he can hold Africans Only jobs, rent a house in Africans Only townships, ride Africans Only trains, and be stopped at any time of the day or night and be ordered to produce a pass, failing which he will be arrested and thrown in jail. His life is circumscribed by racist laws and regulations that cripple his growth, dim his potential, and stunt his life. This was the reality, and one could deal with it in a myriad of ways.

I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities, a thousand unremembered moments, produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people. There was no particular day on which I said, From henceforth I will devote myself to the liberation of my people; instead, I simply found myself doing so, and could not do otherwise.

I have mentioned many of the people who influenced me, but more and more, I had come under the wise tutelage of Walter Sisulu. Walter was strong, reasonable, practical, and dedicated. He never lost his head in a crisis; he was often silent when others were shouting. He believed that the ANC was the means to effect change in South Africa, the repository of black hopes and aspirations. Sometimes one can judge an organization by the people who belong to it, and I knew that I would be proud to belong to any organization in which Walter was a member. At the time, there were few alternatives. The ANC was the one organization that welcomed everyone, that saw itself as a great umbrella under which all Africans could find shelter.

Change was in the air in the 1940s. The Atlantic Charter of 1941, signed by Roosevelt and Churchill, reaffirmed faith in the dignity of each human being and propagated a host of democratic principles. Some in the West saw the charter as empty promises, but not those of us in Africa. Inspired by the Atlantic Charter and the fight of the Allies against tyranny and oppression, the ANC created its own charter, called African Claims, which called for full citizenship for all Africans, the right to buy land, and the repeal of all discriminatory legislation. We hoped that the government and ordinary South Africans would see that the principles they were fighting for in Europe were the same ones we were advocating at home.

Walter’s house in Orlando was a mecca for activists and ANC members. It was a warm, welcoming place and I was often there either to sample a political discussion or MaSisulu’s cooking. One night in 1943 I met Anton Lembede, who held master of arts and bachelor of law degrees, and A. P. Mda. From the moment I heard Lembede speak, I knew I was seeing a magnetic personality who thought in original and often startling ways. He was then one of a handful of African lawyers in all of South Africa and was the legal partner of the venerable Dr.